Review Summary: Sieg Heil!
For most heavy music fans, Roman Saenko isn't a name that has reached the same recognizable status as some other heavy hitters in the black metal community, that's probably because he hasn't killed anyone or fu
cked an effeminate man-purse aficionado, even though his most well known project, Drudkh, is one of the few acts at the forefront of the genre. Before Drudkh came into existence Saenko and fellow Drudkh band mate Thurios first worked together in the ridiculously named Hate Forest.
The most notable of the albums recorded under the Hate Forest moniker, 2003's
Purity, shows the Ukrainians at their rawest. Obviously taking influence from early 90's Nordic bands such as Burzum and Darkthrone as well as some of Immortal's earlier material,
Purity is an unrelenting torrent of droning tremolo picked riffs and furious drumming that really only has two speeds, mid-tempo double bass runs or blitzkrieg blasts. Unlike his haunting screams in Drudkh, Saenko's vocals are a dirty and guttural Blasphemy-esque roar that rumbles over the frigid atmosphere of the guitars like thunder over the frozen tundra. The most intriguing aspect of
Purity is the low keyboard drone that's in the mix in every song, never changing key, leading to a sense of unity, but also a slight sense of monotony when taken in as a whole.
Lyrically, Hate Forest fall in line with the rest of the National Socialist Black Metal crowd that don't see the irony of championing Nazi-ism in a former Soviet satellite state. Meaning that buried in the belches of Roman Saenko are tales of old Slavic lore cast to display Aryan pride, wrapped around bullsh
it Nietzsche influenced ideals of supremacy and power, but you can't understand anything that he's saying in the first place so those that are easily offended can still give
Purity a listen. It's not like most people listen to Black Metal for the lyrics anyways...
Any fan of the rawer side of black metal should get a kick out of
Purity. Even though it does tend to meld together after a while, Hate Forest play off of their influences but don't use them as a creative crutch, creating an album that has enough pissed off personality to stand on it's own without sounding like a derivative mash of the Norwegian scene from a decade prior.
