I was actually surfing ebay for more album by Ron Vento's band Aurora Borealis (as I was listening to my copy of 'Relinquish') and I found this Canadian Black Metal band called Dark Forest who's debut (and to date only) album was titled 'Aurora Borealis' and was released in 2006. Well, I didn't think it would hurt to listen to a few samples that is up on their myspace, and wow, I am surprised.

The main songwriter of the band is a man named David Parks and he manages to churn out some "Folk" influenced Black Metal without coming off pretentious like a lot of other bands of the genre I've heard. The music isn't too raw or too clean, just perfect for Black Metal, in my opinion. The music is by no means original, as there are cliche "winds, waves, and battles" sound effects, group-wailing vocals, and your normal screeching vocals, but somehow he manages to pull it off nicely.

The music is relatively simple without being just shitty or too repetitive. I really enjoy the riffing and leads which come off very melodic. The use of keyboards is both subtle and prominent at times, but doesn't come off over-the-top or cheesy. Lyrical content doesn't stray far from your typical "heathen" themes, but hey, I enjoy those things.

Anyway, a pretty good band on my first observation through. I suggest anyone interested to check them out.

http://www.darkforest.ca/
http://www.myspace.com/darkforestcan

haha. Weird, I was just talking to Dave on saturday (or Dark Forest Dave as hes known here in Calgary), talked about how he needs to get around to making more hoodies. Dark Forest is probably in the top 4 most popular bands to come out of my city, which isn't a surprise considering they/he got to open for bands like Enslaved and Ensiferum. But yeah, Id agree with everything you've stated above.

BTW in Hellas are such band too :p
Alos in mexico(I have hear fiew songs) and in UK too who play old school heavy Metal but in universtay I cant use myspace music pages it fucks up, so cant give you link

But we talk about canadian so I realy enjoy album Aurora Borealis werry good, somehow its same discovery for me like Woods of Ypress and I like it, well answwer are canada was discovered for vikings and thay send there viking spirit thats why some bands can be such good in such genre, realy good band

I really enjoyed Aurora Borealis album, especially its album cover <---

Dark Forest is a great one man project.

Aurora Borealis is an excellent album, along with Wolven Ancestry good stuff is coming from Canada.