For as much as bands such as GOJIRA and BORKNAGAR love to sing about the glory and the terror of nature, I haven't heard of many other acts following in their footsteps. But man, I have been pleasantly surprised to discover ARBRYNTH. These Aussies have described themselves as Forest Metal, and while that may sound pretentious, it's actually a fitting description of their sound. Upon doing some detective work on the Google machine, I found out that it had been roughly nine years since their last release. Their self-titled album in 2011 garnered a bit of online attention, and many of the comments I've read have shown a genuine excitement at the upcoming release due on February 3, 2020. Needless to say, this is fantastic music that is both crushingly hard and trance-inducingly groovy.

What makes this work so well is that they do what groups like ENSLAVED and PRIMORDIAL do with excellence, which is using a fair amount of dynamics of going from loud and thrashing to soft and somber. This helps to keep the music propelling forward as well as avoiding the traps of sounding redundant or repetitive. There's also a fair amount of the Doom Metal mentality available where it's obvious that they think that the riff is so good that you have to play it over and over again. But it's all done in the right way to keep the listener engaged to what's going on musically. Hands down my favorite song on the album is "The Shores Of Avon Ri", as it really does paint the wistful picture of a journey through a land that was once lost and forgotten. The droning guitar throughout the song beckons the listener to venture further into the unknown land that you're walking through. "The Calling" is also another hauntingly beautiful song that serves as the halfway point of the record. Enlisting the help of Stevie Grumont, her atmospheric siren call is both sorrowful and laced with melancholy. It not only helps the listener take a break from the musical onslaught of the band getting after it, but it is the point where you realize that there is more music to explore and who knows what awaits you on your journey through this album.

In conclusion, my only real critique about it is that I wish that the lyrics were a bit more understandable. I think it would've added a lot more weight and heft to the music to know exactly what it is that was being sung about. Obviously, it's nature themed, but beyond that, it's not very clear what is being song about nature. It's not super distracting and it doesn't take away from the listening experience, but it is something I wanted to mention because I would've liked to have had an idea about what was going on. But still, for a band that's been away nine years to come back and write off really well crafted album like this, my hat is off to them. They did an excellent job and I hope that they don't have another long hiatus like they did before because I would like to hear more of this music coming up as the years go on. And yes, as always, BUY THIS ALBUM!!!