Deschain - Sea of Trees Forest of Gallows (2011)

Usually when we get promos with two songs clocking over 30 minutes they are pretty bad. However, Deschain totally proved us wrong with their self-released Melodic Black Metal assault titled “Sea of Trees Forest of Gallows”. With minimal ‘cascadian hipster Black Metal’ influences in their sound, we are completely puzzled as how they have managed to fly under the radar with such a rich and diverse European BM sound.

Hailing from Indiana, this very young band (formed in 2008), has already two self-produced releases under their belts and with this one they are looking to storming the scene by surprise. It is rare that a band can pull off 15+ minute songs that never get dull or repetitive, but Deschain seems to not have any problems doing this. In a time when most ‘average’ Black Metal bands shy away from songs over 6 minutes, it is very cool to hear that some folks can belt out these mammoth pieces and totally rock while doing so.

Opening with “Sea of Trees (Petrified as Shadows)”, the band’s guitar work is very melodic since the first note. The guitars courtesy of Mike Lang, Adam Fisk and Dean Reed, are what creates the highly melodic content presented in this release and they surely don’t need any help of keyboards or any other atmospheric elements. The vocals provided by Bryce Marley (also the band’s drummer), are very reminiscent of Ken Sorceron of Abigail Williams. During the 20 minutes of magic presented in this track we have very melodic passages that will totally have you headbanging instantly. The drumming and bass guitar nicely tuck in the background when the melodic sections are going, but when it’s time to go full-speed they quickly make their mark. There is a bit of repetition of riffs here and there, but they seem to work very well and the band still changes things up to never get dull.

With “Forest of Gallows (Cast Down the Sun)” opening with very determined riffs and a nice bass guitar line, this song has that creepy/eerie feeling that a raw Black Metal track has minus the shitty production. With such an effective entrance, the band dabbles into some ‘Doom-ish’ melodic passages and nice acoustic passages filled with desolate Black Metal voices. It is very nice to see how the band contracts and comes up with very simple yet powerful sections that greatly enhance the melodic level of this album. This is our favorite track of this release since it shows the band’s ability to move back to a more primitive sound and then fully explode with BM assaults. The guitar work shines through this whole song, a feat that is not easily achieved considering the guitars are going for over 10 minutes of the 15 minutes of this track.

With the perfect music, we are a bit sad that there is some crackling and audio artifacts in the first track mainly. But the rest of the release is pretty well crafted and you can hear every little detail in every instrument perfectly. This band has a very rich sound and the creativity to craft extremely long songs without getting dull or annoying, a skill that only comes with many years of music writing. We will be surprised if nobody is interested in signing such a quality band after listening to the tour de force presented in “Sea of Trees Forest of Gallows”.

Release: December 10th, 2011

Country: USA