Unanimated "In The Forest Of The Dreaming Dead" Cassette

Black tape with 6-panel j-card
Limited to 400 copies

If you like the true, old school melodic death metal you cannot overlook a group that made history in this field. Unanimated are a real legend for this genre, being one of the very first to play this kind of death metal. They were formed in 1988 but their debut is from 1993 and it’s this “In the Forest of the Dreaming Dead” that it’s still regarded as a milestone in a different genre of conceiving the death metal.
The production is still a bit skinny and dry out and the death metal influences are still a bit preponderant, along with a black feeling that was inevitable for the period. The influences of the early masters of this genre, At The Gates, is present but somehow they added something new in the lead guitars lines and in the general melodies. The raw, fast sound reminds me the one we could find in “The Read in the Sky is Ours” but let’s analyse this album more deeply.
The arpeggio and the ethereal vocals at the beginning of “At Dawn-Whispering Shadows” have inside something new for the genre. It’s not yet the too melodic approach of some bands we can find nowadays, but checking the parts in which the electric guitars are more present, we can already find the melodic lines. They are always well balanced with others that differ in violence, being more vicious, but they were very good at throwing a stone further in the panorama.
The vocals too, are more suffered and somehow they reminded a sort of raw, primordial sound. The fast solos and the adjoined of this kind of vocals reminded me early Bathory too…I don’t know if this affirmation is too audacious but each one sees inside the music what he wants. Anyway, going on listening to this CD that atmosphere is becoming truly black and dark. There’s no light and in some songs, the black metal influences are heavily present, throwing away the melodies to prefer the darkness (“Blackness of the Fallen Star” and “Fire Storm”).
There are some keyboards parts too but my idea is that they wanted to use them just to add something more in darkness and obscurity. They generally have a weird feeling and in “Storms from the Skies of Grief” are perfect to accompany the melodic guitars lead lines in creating a truly apocalyptic and epic piece of music. This part is awesome with less screamed vocals and more melodies. This is the highlight of this album and one of the very first examples of melodic approach to death metal.
The other songs are characterized by a furious tremolo picking on the guitars and again pitch black atmosphere with growls and black metal passages where the keyboards leave their previous path to epic feeling to return to dark sounds. Check out also one of the very first expressions of sadly melodic sounds in “Wind of a Dismal Past”. Overall, this album is a true important piece of primordial melodic death metal but I feel to recommend it to the classic death metal lovers instead to the ones that use to listen nowadays “melodic death metal” (metalcore could be better). But, if you want to experience the roots of a genre anyway, Unanimated will welcome you.

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