Bandcamp The painting on the front of Reveries of a Forgotten Spirit tells you most of what Firmament are after: a still northern lake under a spilled galaxy of stars, spruce silhouettes on the shore, everything washed in deep blue. This German project sits on Naturmacht Productions, the atmospheric-black-metal label that built its reputation on nature-mysticism and an explicit refusal to work with extremist bands, and the record is a seven-track voyage from forest to stars to sea and back. Calling it black metal, though, undersells how much melody and light Firmament let in.
For long stretches this plays less like black metal than like symphonic, melodic heavy music with black metal in its bloodstream. Clean vocals and even spoken passages carry as much of the album as the harsh screams do, acoustic guitars open and close the biggest tracks, and orchestral and synth layers thicken the climaxes into something closer to symphonic gothic than to raw second-wave frost. “Through the Enchanted Woods” swings between airy acoustic calm and a dense modern wall with the screams cutting through on raw mid presence, “From a Cosmic Shore” keeps a natural, un-brickwalled drum room and uses its breaks to fight off wall-of-sound fatigue, and the title-track interlude drops the band entirely for warm, unhurried guitar arpeggios over a synthetic sub-drone. When Firmament let the quiet frame the heavy, the record genuinely takes off.
The catch is density. The loudest climaxes stack rhythm guitars, choirs and synths until the upper mids clog and the extreme screams sink behind the wall they are supposed to be riding, and a couple of tracks push their master harder than the album’s best, most dynamic moments suggest they need to. It is a well-made, frequently beautiful record that is at its strongest when it is at its most spacious, and slightly less so every time it reaches for maximum weight. The songwriting, too, leans on melodic-death and symphonic shapes that are lovely but rarely surprising.
For a night drive under a clear sky, or for anyone who likes their atmospheric black metal melodic, clean-sung and heavy on the scenery, Reveries of a Forgotten Spirit casts a real spell. Come for the atmosphere and the dynamic swings, not for cold, minimal orthodoxy. It is a voyage, and it means it.
An atmospheric black metal voyage that leans far more melodic and symphonic than the tag implies, carried as much by clean vocals, spoken passages and acoustic guitar as by harsh screams. The strength is dynamic contrast: “Through the Enchanted Woods” swings between airy acoustic calm and a dense modern wall with the screams cutting through on raw mid presence, “From a Cosmic Shore” keeps a natural un-brickwalled drum room and uses its breaks against wall-of-sound fatigue, and the title-track interlude drops the band for warm guitar arpeggios over a synthetic sub-drone. The reservation is density: the loudest climaxes stack rhythm guitars, choirs and synths until the upper mids clog and the extreme screams sink behind the wall, and a couple of tracks push their master harder than the album’s most dynamic moments need. Beautiful and spacious at its best, a touch crowded whenever it reaches for maximum weight.
Standout tracks: Through the Enchanted Woods, From a Cosmic Shore, The Seven Sisters of Dreamtime
