Artist: Ancient North
Country: USA
Label: Self-Released
Formats: Digital
Year: 2025
After a blitzing start with firing away one recording after another, over time Ancient North has been taking on a slower pace. Still, you can’t be surprised that Forlorn & Co., this is the first album recorded with a full line-up, is still hitting the “record”-button every time they feel like. Although the band has produced some decent material over the past few years, the problem with Ancient North is that they suffer from a severe lack of an own identity. Literally every recording to date was clearly built upon the blueprints of various Norwegian Black Metal bands. While I don’t give a flying F about originality, I never was able to shake off a certain negative feeling around this particular concept.
And, yep, with ‘The Woods Of Samael’ Ancient North takes a dive in yet another sort of approach to the Black Metal genre. And once again it is nothing you haven’t heard before. Although I can image that the idea was to start an album based on Immortal’s most straight-forward sounding recordings, this newest album of the Americans lacks the intricacies and overall catchiness of ‘Pure Holocaust’ or ‘Battles In The North’. Pretty much the same sort of critique went to Ancient North’s previous album, ‘Winter Holocaust’, but this time around the music feels very much like a mix-up between the first classic albums of both Dark Funeral and Setherial. Fast paced and lots of tremolo riffing. Again, it is well-executed, brimming with good melodic riffs and blazing drums, but it fails to touch upon anything on an emotional level.
Possibly that has something to do with my personal expectations – I don’t expect anything when listening to a new Ancient North album. I am also aware that this is none of my business, as I presume these guys are having fun doing their thing, Yet, I can’t stress enough that this band seriously need to rethink their strategy if they really want to please anyone else with their music. But, in all fairness, choosing to go on with a full line-up was definitely a great choice: the music sounds much beefier and powerful. Now that Forlorn doesn’t need to focus on all instruments, let’s hope he turns that energy into composing more original stuff. Please.
