Unanimated - In the Forest of the Dreaming Dead (1993)^{Release ID: 9910}

My earliest memories of Sweden's Unanimated go back to the discovery of their debut album "In the Forest of the Dreaming Dead" while visiting Neuropath vocalist Mark Wangmann's house some time in 1993. I'd been following the early attempts at a more melodic brand of death metal for a little while by that point but this particular record was a little different in that it seemed to have a foot in black metal territory too. The idea appealed to me quite a bit so I ripped a copy of "In the Forest of the Dreaming Dead" for myself & gave it a fair few listens that year. My enjoyment of that release also saw me following Unanimated through their three subsequent full-lengths, all of which are worth hearing, particularly their 1995 sophomore album "Ancient God of Evil" which I'm a big fan of & tends to be my Unanimated release of choice these days. Perhaps that's the reason that I haven't returned to "In the Forest of the Dreaming Dead" since the 1990's but I remember it fondly & have been looking forward to seeing how it's aged for some time now. I've also been interested to see if it might prove to have been a significant player in the development of the melodic black metal scene as I remembered it being a lot more blackened than some websites would have you believe in the current day.

"In the Forest of the Dreaming Dead" is a fairly raw affair although the compositions are professionally put together & have a certain class about them, particularly for the time. My recollections were spot on too in that this is most certainly a melodic black/death metal hybrid. In fact, I'd go so far as to suggest that there's more black metal included than there is death metal which is in direct contrast to the general consensus. A lot of this material sounds uncannily like Swedish melodic black metal godfathers Dissection as well, so much so that there are more than a few sections that border on plagiarism &, given that "In the Forest of the Dreaming Dead" was released in February 1993 & Dissection's legendary "The Somberlain" debut album was released in December 1993, I'm gonna have to throw a cat amongst the pigeons by suggesting that perhaps Dissection may have sounded a fair bit different if not for the influence of Unanimated.

The musicianship is pretty decent but was still clearly a work in progress, particularly the blast-beats of Peter Stjärnvind (Krux/Merciless/Black Trip/Entombed/Murder Squad/Nifelheim/Pest/Regurgitate) which were still fairly primitive in their execution. I enjoy the vocals of Micke Jansson & find them to sit further over into the black metal camp than they do the death metal one, often even hinting at a Darkthrone-ish croak. The consistent use of higher-register, tremolo-picked melodies from guitarists Jonas Mellberg (Therion) & Johan Bohlin (Desultory) is a real strength for Unanimated & is probably the best thing about the album with the more solid tracks like "Blackness of the Fallen Star", "Through The Gates", "Mournful Twilight" & the title track all being littered with memorable melodic hooks. Interestingly though, my favourite track is the short ambient interlude "Silence Ends" which kicks off the B side. I'm a big fan of ambient music & this example could easily have been stolen from a professionally produced ambient record. As is often the case, it's only one of the more popular songs that I struggle with in the Viking metal period Bathory inspired "Cold Northern Breeze" which I find to be pretty cheesy really. The choice to close out the album with a cover version of Venom's classic "Buried Alive" was a strange one too but thankfully the band pull it off pretty well, even if it's heavy metal style does sound a little out of place on an extreme metal release.

Overall, "In the Forest of the Dreaming Dead" was a pretty decent way for Unanimated to kick off their recording career. It was also fairly groundbreaking in the sound they'd developed for themselves, even at this early stage. The execution isn't perfect & the song-writing could have done with a bit of a polish but that hasn't stopped me from enjoying this entertaining (if inessential) Swedish release.

For fans of Dissection, Necrophobic & Gates of Ishtar.