Band:	Forgotten Sunrise
Album:	Behind The Abysmal Sky/Forever Sleeping Greystones
Style:	Industrial metal
Release date:	November 02, 2009
A review by:	destroyah

Behind the Abysmal Sky ('93 demo)

01. Intro: Sunrise
02. Rottening Art
03. Alive in the Grave
04. Indifference
05. Son of Sun
06. Knock-Outro: Solstice

Forever Sleeping Greystones ('94 demo)

01. Unknown Land of Silence
02. Ode to the Depressive Timedance
03. Enjoyment of Sunrise
04. In Your Eyes

'95 live recordings

01. Forgotten Sunrise [live]
02. Snowflowers [live]
03. Indifference [live]
04. Son of Sun [live]
05. Blizzard [live]
06. Enjoyment of Sunrise [live]
07. My Little Dreamangel (Princess of Azure) [live]

In the early 90s, between trying to decide at which temperature it is best to cook a shoe and which type of water to drink on the side (available were "almost pure" and "severely contaminated"), the Estonians were making an effort at developing the local metal culture to the best of their limited abilities. Forgotten Sunrise was one band from the immediate post-Soviet era that stood out.

I have this friend. He's young enough to be sane, and old enough to remember those early scene days. Whenever someone mentions Forgotten Sunrise, you can see him liven up considerably and start talking about how god damn great that band was. Mentioning this band is, to him, the equivalent of a hundred milligrams of pure adrenalin. And with good reason. I've been trying to get him to lend me the '93 and '94 demos of Forgotten Sunrise for ages now, but thus far he's always managed to evade actually giving me his prized copies. Thankfully, Nailboard Records finally decided to re-release the demos as part of their "Gems from the Estonian Metal Vault" series. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Estonian metal has always struggled to break out of the local scene, and while Forgotten Sunrise also fell short (whether due to line-up crisis', or the musical shift), they were the one band that would have deserved the break. Even today their riffs, soaked in eerie sound effects, manage to haunt the listener. Seamed into the catchy, vigorous and original death metal soundscape are tastefully subtle keyboards, various experiments with flutes, violins and the like, as well as occasional tracks of clean vocals. While "Behind the Abysmal Sky" is more true to the death metal sound, "Forever Sleeping Greystones" also makes incursions into doom territory. The included 1995 live recordings occasionally foreshadow the band's later change in direction towards deathbeat and even use sporadic elements of jazzy-sounding trip-hop.

Above all however, the material still sounds incredibly fresh and I might even venture to say that it is the only album in the entire Estonian gems series that actually lives up to the title without making any compromises.

Absolutely fantastic.