Review: Forrest – ‘Soluna’


Forrest




The twenty first century seems like such a difficult one for the sensitive young lad: pulled from pillar to post psychologically, such are the conflicted messages he’s bombarded with daily he hardly seems to know if it’s best to embrace his femininity or alternatively man up. One last refuge does remain for anyone wandering lonely as cloud though: the darkest recesses of the bedroom are still welcoming even in the 3D printer age, complete with suitably introvert music to darken the mood to taste.

The bar for this long running past time was raised last year by The Twilight Sad’s Nobody Wants To Be Here And Nobody Wants To Leave, a record which was three parts brooding angst and two of contrition, doom laden but full of highly singable vignettes about (Un) life, the universe and like, everything. Forrest are a quartet from South Wales, of whom TTS would appear to be their go-to intra gig band such are the similarities in musical tone and reverb drowned sentiment. Following on from their début EP “Before You Go”, Soluna is a welcome – if at just eight tracks less than substantive (We’ll come back to that) – foray into a popularised seam which at the top end sports the likes of Biffy Clyro and Twin Atlantic.

At times their work crackles with real energy: the epic Standing Stone fires into life sporadically, an astute blend of quiet-loud passages, sweet vocal harmonies and sense of blackened romance, whilst both Asylum and Remember lean heavily on a similar feeling of desultory confusion and unease. This is a world where the dynamic can frequently overwhelm the material after all, but to the band’s credit they roll out the bigger, straightforward guns just as everything seems about to head off to self pity. On Luna the riffs are of stadium heft, and despite the impediment of sounding like it was produced in a basement, both it and Meet You There could feasibly be meaningful cross-genre rock outs at a festival near you this summer.

An outfit with promise to burn then, which makes the inclusion of the slight, sub two minute opener Ambition – a track which winds up in super recoil fashion, only to abruptly sever – and a not much longer instrumental (The almost titular Sol) something of a frustration, especially given Soluna’s apparently lengthy gestation process. You see here’s the thing: we all go through that phase of believing that the bad times are rolling in perpetuity, but the journey’s longer than half an hour. Forrest now have our attention, but they should pray we don’t fall in love any time soon

Andy Peterson


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