After a successful first album, Sombres Forêts is back with a darker and colder second offering while keeping its majestic side. More powerful and with a bigger sound that on Quintessence, Royaume de Glace also sees Anatar developing the band's acoutsic side. Sombres Forêts offers brooding, majestic Black Metal of the highest calibre.
released March 3, 2008
Sombres Foret’s Royaume De Glace translates to Kingdom of Ice, which seems rather appropriate. While maintaining a unique identity, Sombres Forets is more or less indicative of the general predominant sounds of the Quebec black metal scene – very atmospheric but remaining a sharp set of teeth at its core, has touches of depressive black metal and more than anything evokes an icy feeling. If you’ve heard the debut, you already know the template. Annatar has essentially made the same album twice – the main difference being that he did a much better job the second time around. There has only been a two year break between albums, so one can only assume the man hit the woodshed pretty damn hard.
Let’s be honest for second, guys. One-man black metal bands often have a tendency to suck pretty hard. A lot of the time it’s just a dude who’s ok enough at the guitar rasping along with a lame drum machine and a bass half-heartedly following the root note. A lot of the time it’s just done out of necessity and it doesn’t end up feeling complete (and then there’s also the issue of many one-man BM bands feeling the need to release 10 albums a year, but I’ll save that for another rant). What Annatar has created is worlds removed from a greasy teenager making incompetent Darkthrone or Burzum rehashes in his mother’s basement. Royaum De Glace is a fully realized vision, both evoking vast winter landscapes through atmosphere and showing some really tight chops as a multi-instrumentalist. There is no need for a full band, because Annatar can play circles around the average black metal musical on whatever instrument he chooses.
It seems that behind the best one-man black metal bands, more often than not lies an excellent drummer. Leviathan, Panopticon, Ruins of Beverast . . . and now Sombres Forets seems to be continuing that tradition. While he is better at everything this time around, it definitely shows the most in his drumming. He’s not doing anything that revolutionary, his playing is just really tight, varied and imaginative. Most importantly, he does lots of little things to spice it up: an intricate cymbal pattern here, an inventive fill there. He knows how to ebb and flow, when to hold back and let the atmosphere develop and when to make the drumming a true show stealer. It also helps that the drums have a very clear, organic sound that works wonderfully with the atmospheric nature of the music.
The not being revolutionary but adding little things to spice it up sentiment applies to the whole album, really. The debut was this album in rudimentary form, basically. Here, he’ll have a volcanic lead guitar climax like in “The Forrest” (seriously, if a guitar could have an orgasm this is what it would sound like), a really well thought-out acoustic guitar section that is evidently so much more than the window dressing that so many black metal bands use them as or even just an unexpected change in tempo to mix things up. At the heart of this is a pretty familiar formula, Annatar has just done his absolute best to make the most of it. The riffs here aren’t really hammer you in the face type of thing, but they still feel like legitimate black metal and lets this atmospheric release still retain some bite. There’s still some ambient textures and the keyboard tones are fantastic and have a deeply ethereal presence. The folk sections are excellent, just as much time has obviously been put into crafting them as the black metal parts. While it has taken me a few listens to really appreciate this, the bass often plays these really awesome melodies in the background, contrasting the icy tremolo waves of fuzz produced by the guitar.
The evolution here is very similar to Gris, a band very much intertwined with Sombres Forets (a trend that would carry over to both bands' third albums). Both bands took the previous template and used it as a springboard to expand their sound while remaining faithful to their core aesthetic. This actually does feel like it explores a lot of the same ideas as Gris, just in a slightly more orthodox form. Anyway, Royaume De Glace perfectly captures the feeling of a Québécois winter and a feeling pretty indicitave of the QCBM scene in general. I absolutely consider this to be one of the quintessential staples of Quebec’s black metal cannon. This is a very important release in a scene absolutely brimming with creativity. /source