Origin: Kharkiv, Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine 🇺🇦
Genre: Black Metal
Label: Osmose Productions
In the spirit of mystique or perhaps due to a deep-seated distaste for the media, Ukraine’s Hate Forest have never given an interview, nor have they even released a band photo since their invocation onto the black metal scene back in 1995. As someone who’s been doing this for a while now, I can tell you that a band’s music had better be world-class if they plan on taking this kind of hermetic approach to both their craft and their dealings with the media. Otherwise, there’s no reason to even follow them. Well, I can tell you that since their inception, and as the years have passed over this vast scape of broken humanity, Hate Forest have bestowed upon us a number of well-reviewed recordings that rival the very best of what the Scandinavian or any other school of BM – for that matter – has ever had to offer.
Hate Forest’s records transcend the typicality of orthodox Devil-worshipping black metal into the sphere of mysticism, Nietzscheism and of course into the forests of the unknown. They disbanded in 2004 only to emerge out of from the bog of stagnation in 2019. Then during the plague-ridden year of 2020, Hate Forest released “Hour of the Centaur”; their first album release in 15 years. And once again a triumph that left those who experienced it in states of reveling and eager anticipation of further excursions into December twilight-illuminated woodlands and deeper delving into the realm of the philosophical.
On December 21, as 2022’s final breaths gave way to a wretched death gurgle, Hate Forest released their sixth full-length studio album, “Innermost”, under the blood-soaked banner of Osmose Productions. “Innermost” is one of several great BM albums that were released at the end of last year alongside opuses such as Satanic Warmaster’s “Aamongandr”, Nazghor’s “Seventh Secular Crusade” and “Thy Darkened Shade’s” “Liber Lvcifer II: Mahapralaya”. Each record a gem, but what stands out most about “Innermost” are three things: its unassuming cover art, its subtle death metal vibes and sole/founding member Roman Saenko’s bass-heavy, Glen Benton-worshipping gutturals. Hate Forest is a project loosely influenced by Bolt Thrower and they even covered their Nietzsche-inspired classic; “Cenotaph”.
From a purely black metal perspective, with “Innermost”, you can expect to fall victim to an oppressive, Archgoat kind of battering: abusive, ruthless and deadly, but offset by an air of class and what I can only describe as a conflicting sort of urgency in elegance. Racing yet stunning progressions providing all the atmosphere a black metal album could possibly need. Not to mention the captivating rise, fall and unrelenting forward motion of tracks like the opener, “Those Who Howl Inside the Snowstorm”, and the raising of hellfire from the earth with your bare hands epicality of its follower “By Full Moon’s Light Alone the Steppe Thrown Can Be Seen”.
As per Hate Forest tradition, there are still no interviews to be given (I asked), and the band’s mysterious aura is as strong as ever. How seductive. And as far as “Innermost” is concerned, this is a record that stands as an honoring of a different kind of lore; one of musical excellence and pride in true black metal that dates back to the second wave heyday. Elite, uncompromising and soul-crushingly aggressive, with “Innermost”, Hate Forest – in their own unassuming way – show us all once again how this black metal thing is done.
9/10
Experience “Innermost” by Hate Forest right here as presented by Osmose Productions:
~Jeger
