Published: May 18, 2020 

Well this is a weird little entity, Hierophant Violent by Forlesen, this is not just a switch on and turn up the volume kinda deal, this is a ritual. This is a lights off, eyes closed, laying horizonal, and empty your thoughts kind of affair. If I said this was unlike anything I’ve heard before I wouldn’t be lying, it’s completely its own thing, and if you like the thought of being taken away sonically, even without the use of narcotics, then this 36 minute, two track opus will take you on that ride.

Forlesen ‘Hierophant Violent’

As there are only two tracks, it’s impossible to choose highlights; it’s safer to say that the whole experience is the highlight, the journey that unfolds is so rich and to even pick out parts is impossible.

Not so much track one, as it is the first composition, Following Light, opens with a transcendent soundscape, and I instantly feel waves of calm flow through me. It feels as if I’m floating through the universe, I’m aimless, it’s tranquil, and I feel weightless and unburdened. It softly pulses, and as a slow turbulence builds to a sudden urgency in the piece, I feel a shortness of breath.

It’s replaced by calm, it is soothing, peaceful, and I relax again, the crisp cymbals chime, like a slow heartbeat. From nowhere there’s a voice in the darkness, its ethereal, its non-threatening, and it feels as if it’s guiding me somewhat. It doesn’t last long. The calm is replaced by a tension, and the tranquillity is shattered by pulsing drums. Our starting point seems like a distant memory, do we long for a return to the calm, or follow the path into the void.

Composition two is titled Nightbridge and as I’m still recovering from Following Light, it begins. This time it’s darker, the opening vocal is more reminiscent of a chant than of anything else. It’s eerie, and invokes notions of vampires, the drums are like the rapping at a door, as if lifted from an Edgar Allan Poe fable.

this is a phenomenal piece of art, it isn’t just music, it speaks on a completely different level, it’s rich, captivating, and all consuming…

I’m awake. It feels like I’m riding the wind, no, more like I AM the wind, gently blowing over a midnight city. The haunting vocal flows through me, it calms me. But It doesn’t remain. I hang off of every sound, the drums, the guitar, those ethereal vocals, it feels like I’m being summoned home, my final days, and the end of the journey, through the portal, and into the next life.

This is broken by an intense outpouring, perhaps a reluctance to pass, the screech of the vocal, and the blast beats of resilience, the notion of unacceptance at the end of things. This breaks any ambience, its as far removed as it could be, its intense and aggressive, its urgency replaces any notions of a calm, its fiercely passionate, it pulses, and pulls me on.

We’re taken from tantric to terrifying, and back again, to the final acceptance, and as the smoke clears, I acknowledge my fate.

In all honesty, I’m blown away, this is a phenomenal piece of art, it isn’t just music, it speaks on a completely different level, it’s rich, captivating, and all consuming. To pigeon hole this into any specific category would do it no justice, it has to be experienced to be fully appreciated for what it is, and that, is a piece of art.