In The Woods (Norway) - Diversum

In The Woods...

Diversum

Soulseller Records

25 November 2022

I do not like this band In The Woods.

It seems like every time I try to give their music a chance I find them fiddling around doing whatever they can to avoid playing music that could be fun, rocking or headbanging. They will do whatever they can to not rock. They cannot write a regular song if their lives depended on it. They are incapable of doing it. So.frustrating.gosh.

Active since 1991, the Norwegian band has a conflicted relation to Norwegian extreme metal, having heaviness in their music always with a burning desire to play prog, spacey rock or something like that.

I was not expecting anything from this 2022 album. That’s why I’m surprised that I have enjoyed it. This most recent work finds them focusing on more compact songwriting, the new singer has good melodic vocals while still having growling, and the prog or experiments have finally, finally!, gotten under control, like perhaps for one album somebody decided to dial it down. Even a normal, average, non-musician metal fan like myself can understand these songs. For me, the new singer has a voice that sounds good to the ear, with a good, melodic tone, and the band has at last, it would seem, decided to use more melody and not go out of their way to avoid melody by launching into long, atmospheric passages. Whatever it is, whatever the reason, I’ll take it.

I would not trust this band as far as I can throw them. I fully expect them to revert back to their regular progginess on their next album because I am sure somebody in the band is Norwegian miserable that more metal fans might be enjoying their music. In The Woods is usually metal for people that do not listen to metal music. Be that as it may, this particular album right here has good singing, compact songs (ranging from four to seven minutes), and some actual metal/rock guitar riffs and melodies. In terms of the growling, I can take it or leave it. When the singing is this good, the growling does not add much. They would sound even better with just the melodic singing. I wish they had more solos or guitar melodies, too. They are still too stingy with them. Regardless, despite the fact that this album is still a melodic prog album, but a more balanced album, they have such good songs that I still enjoy the album even though I have heard it dozens of times.

What do you know! There is something new under the sun. In The Woods is capable of making a balanced metal album that has songs, actual songs that stay on point. I’m going to keep and enjoy this album. Oh, I am not going to get my hopes up for the next album. If anything, I expect them to open the next album with two 17-minute songs, both of which will have a full five minutes of mellow almost-silent keyboards, and I am going to be shouting, fist-in-the-air once again, “I.do.not.like.In.The.Woods!!!”

IN THE WOODS... - A WONDERFUL CRISIS

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