Live Review: Carpathian Forest – Manchester

There’s something ominous in the air tonight. Something that hints of evil and diabolical intent being carried on the breeze as I walk through town. It’s unmistakeable, palpable, portentous… but it is a Tuesday, so that could be it.

More likely, however, is that those Norwegian dark lords of chaos, Carpathian Forest, are making a rare return to Manchester after twenty-years, with tonight being the first night of the band’s most extensive UK tour ever.

Opening tonight’s invocation of the Dark Arts is blackened punk and D-beat exponents, Wolfbastard, who made something of a splash when they appeared on the S.O.P.H.I.E. Stage at Bloodstock 2023, but it’s easy to forget that these home-town lads have been plying their filthy trade for more than a decade now. Predominantly built from the band’s most recent record, Hammer the Bastards, these illegitimate lupines give scant regard to polite etiquette through the festering riffs of Can’t Escape the Grave and Graveyard Slag. Buckfast Blasphemies is as you would expect such a titled song to be, and there’s a couple of newbies fitted in to whet the appetite for an upcoming album. Satanic Scum Punks and Fuck Off, Then Die suggests there isn’t likely to be much deviation from Wolfbastard’s current trajectory.

Out of Poland, though now settled in London, Black Altar have certainly not forgotten their eastern European roots. With thirty-years behind them, the band hit the Rebellion stage as though on a mission to spread the dread and despondency of the Dark One to the gathered horde. Black Metal Terror rips and snarls, while Path ov Death follows suit before taking a turn for the symphonic.

Theirs is an uncompromising take on the genre: blast beats and raging guitars offer no quarter, though some respite is garnered in Via Draconis’ coda, and the stripped back, low-fi aesthetics of Kingdom ov Razors.

If Norwegian Black Metal can be summed up by Dimmu Borgir and Satyricon as being the acceptable face of the genre, with Mayhem and Gorgoroth as the mad and the bad, then it follows the dangerous to know are the anti-social, misanthropic Taake and Carpathian Forest. Raw, nihilistic to the point of bordering on DSBM, yet somehow also with an obsidian humour, Nattefrost has been leading his horde of berserkers since the beginning of the 1990s, before anyone had ever heard of black metal, beyond the title of the Venom classic.

It's been almost twenty-years since the band last released a full-length, with only the Likelm single of 2018 showing that the there was life in the band still. So, tonight’s show is a celebration of Carpathian Forest’s history and a thank you to all the fans who’ve kept faith and supported them over the years.

Opener Vi åpner porten til helvete... is taken from the last record, the statement-sending Fuck You All!!!!!, and eases Manchester into the set with few blasts and more of a doomy, menacing atmosphere. Natterfrost’s vocals are raw and demonic, stripped and screaming as the riff continues on repeat. Defending the Throne of Evil’s Skjend hans lik ups the tempo while maintaining the low-fi approach with, oddly, a symphonic element that works to oppose the general feel.

Pierced Genitalia storms and blasts it way from the sex dungeon that is Black Shining Leather, borrowed Svarrttjern drummer, Audun, beating his skins like a BDSM sadist, as the vocals twist in a combination of pleasure and pain. The depravity is maintained with the edgy The Swordsman, an unmistakeable swing no doubt being utterly intended.

Mask of a Slave and He’s Turning Blue come from the Strange Old Brew record but feel as though they belong thematically on Black Shining Leather; Mask of a Slave steps away from the black metal barrage in favour of a more traditional metal sound.

When Thousand Moons Have Circles and the band’s eponymous track are both hitting thirty this year, coming from the debut EP back in 1995, both of which have at least something of an Emperor influence of their structures and sounds.

Likelm and its B-side, the cover of Turboneger’s All My Friends are Dead, are played back to back, giving glimpse at the development of Carpathian Forest from a grim, low-fi sound to a more Black n’ Roll approach, with a little punk dropped in for good measure.

Their cover of The Cure’s A Forest is tonight’s second cover, one that has regularly been in the band’s repertoire since 1998.

This iteration of Carpathian Forest has largely been together since 2017, with Svarrttjern guitarists Malphas and Erik Gamble once again linking up with Audun. Only bassist Nasreten, most recently of Visegard, is yet to appear on any of Forest’s records, having joined post-pandemic.

The set ends with Bloody Fucking Nekro Hell’s unrelenting charge, bringing an end to a fantastic night of unapologetic darkness and evil. Hopefully Carpathian Forest won’t wait until 2045 to return to Manchester for a third time, or to release another album, for that matter.