Review Summary: Sounds from the psych ward.
Have you ever been to the looney bin? I have. It was a short lived stay, but ultimately the stresses of life can get to you and drive you literally insane. Sometimes it can all be too much and you lose all sense of what's normal. On their 4th full length,
Life Promised Death, German black metallers Farsot give you the musical equivalent of life in the psych ward.
Now to be completely honest, Farsot has never been a band that I've been really wowed by. Their brand of modern black metal has always been good, but nothing that really pushed the boundary of being groundbreaking. That has changed on
Life Promised Death. They've done a complete 180 from a band that usually was happy to play it safe to one that is willing to take risks. This album is far more progressive than their past material. The riffage here is punishing and psychedelic almost, alternating between extremely intense almost death metal like riffs and soothing acoustic passages throughout and a suffocating atmosphere replicating what it must feel like to float around in purgatory out in the twilight zone. Just floating around out in space. Vocals are split between demonic shouts from the underworld and some of the most haunting cleans that are on the verge of crooning a la
Writen in Waters by Ved Buens Ende. There's a neverending feeling of dread permeating throughout this album, making you feel paranoid in the best possible way.
Life Promised Death is a step up for Farsot in every way. They took a swing for something more experimental and out of their comfort zone and it paid dividends for them and then some. The only real drawback is that some of the tracks can drag on just a tad too long at times. But in the grand scheme of things, it's a very small complaint. This album pushes the boundaries of your mental capacity. At one point you get shouted at, "Why am I here? Why do I do this?" Well, that's what we're all trying to figure out for ourselves. Maybe the pressures of life have been getting to the men of Farsot. Maybe they feel hopeless like we all feel at times throughout life. And maybe that hopelessness has led them to releasing their magnum opus. Life can suck, but we always have people like Farsot to make thought provoking music to make us forget about that hopelessness for just a little while.
