Carpathian Forest
Defending the Throne of Evil

4.5
superb

Review

by Hawks USER (166 Reviews)
July 14th, 2008 | 137 replies

Release Date: 2003 | Tracklist

Carpathian Forest is most well known for being one of the most satanic bands in the black metal scene. They are also known for their morbid lyrical content which doesn't always deal with satanism alone. Other lyrical themes include morbid things such as death, sodomy, and suicide just to name a few. Throughout their career, Carpathian Forest has always played traditional black metal. No symphonic elements anywhere to be found. With this album, the band makes their turn towards symphonic black metal with the addition of the keyboards to their music. The keyboards are a huge factor on this album because they help make Defending the Throne of Evil so much better than all their other albums and their best album to date.

Like I said before, the keyboards play a huge factor in making this album great. The symphonic arrangements start off right at the beginning of the album on It's Darker Than You Think. It starts off with a creepy symphonic piece, the bass comes in, and then you're surprised with a very loud "AHH" from Nattefrost. Chances are that part will scare the hell out of you the first time you hear it. These kinds of symphonic pieces are displayed a whole lot throughout the album. The guitars have also changed a bit. On previous Carpathian Forest albums the guitarists would mostly play just regular black metal riffs with barely any melody displayed. On this album you have the guitarists playing melodic riffs, while keeping the fast, black metal touch. As most people have probably come to expect from a black metal drummer, this guy plays blast beats mostly the whole time during the album. On slower parts the drummer mostly just keeps the pace of the song going with slow beats. The bassist is surprisingly audible on this album and along with the drums helps keep the pace of the songs.

The vocals by Nattefrost are absolutely menacing. This guy actually sounds like he is possessed by satan and thats no lie. His vocals are kind of hard to describe because they are so unique. They are extremely raspy and his voice is pretty high pitched, but not Dani Filth high pitched. I would say Nattefrost has the high pitched voice like Dani and the raspy voice of Sakis Tolis of Rotting Christ. The point is, his vocals are absolutely amazing on this album and he is by far one of the best vocalists that black metal has ever seen.

Overall this album is amazing. There are a couple instrumentals which are really sort of pointless, but they're really creepy and some people might enjoy them. Everything on this album is top notch from the vocals to the instruments. This is truly a relatively unknown gem in the black metal scene and more people should pay attention to it. If you've heard previous Carpathian Forest albums, this album might come as sort of a surprise, but its a really good surprise. Everyone into black metal should get this album as it is definitely the best album by this band to date.

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