Skyforest - A New Dawn (2020)^{Release ID: 17384}

I wish I could come on here and tell you guys how much I loved this new album from Skyforest. They are a blackgaze band from Moscow who released their newest album, A New Dawn a couple of weeks ago. There are a lot of great ideas on display here. Unfortunately they are held back by some really cheap sounding production.

The rhythm and acoustic guitars sound tinny, the percussion has issues all over the place, but the ones that stand out for me are the rattling hi-hat and toms that sound like the drummer is literally hitting garbage cans. And the singers… bless the singers for trying their best, but whenever the vocalist goes into their high screams, they are so poorly mixed and quiet, I started questioning whether or not the vocalist wasn’t whispering like they did earlier on in the record!

But I won’t go without talking about the good stuff. The melodies in both the clean vocals and lead guitar are very solid. The bass lines are very good when they are separated from the rhythm guitar. The clean singing between male and female leads is respectable. And the compositions themselves could have been magnificent if it had been mixed better all around.

To put it bluntly, this is the kind of album that hurts to review, because I can tell this group has potential to be great, but makes some baffling decisions and places them right at the front. If you want epic sounding black metal with symphonic elements, try the newest Dzö-nga album Thunder in the Mountains instead. This isn’t all bad, but it deserves a lot better.