Depressing Oceans - Damnation Falls (digital download)
One morning I was checking my email and got a message from someone I didn’t know. Happens all the time. It was in reference to Colloquial Sound Recordings and local black metal. I answered that I ran the label, and have for the last twelve years. I said I wasn’t aware of many other black metal bands in the area, and that CSR is sort of an isolationist thing. It’s said that no man is an island, but I would very much beg to differ. The responses that followed were cryptic. What crashed onto my shores next was song after song. Some complete, some sketches, all of them intriguing. All of them sent to me by a person going by Forest Child. Perfect. The music was getting stranger. I checked my mailbox one sunny afternoon and found a manilla envelope with a CDR and a note. It was Forest Child, asking if his music would be fit for CSR. I listened and was instantly locked into the primitive power and raw emotion. Forest Child remained enigmatic. I kept in contact. I met him only once, in passing. He knew who I was, and as he walked away, he mentioned who he was. I had gathered that he was new to town, and was searching on Metal Archives for labels and bands from the area. More songs kept coming. I couldn’t get a grasp on how old he was, or what he was about. He didn’t look like I thought he would, and that’s a very good thing to me. One day I got a message with five songs, “Damnation Falls.” This was it. This was the debut release. Depressing Oceans is the pure distillation of all that drew me into black metal in the first place. It is raw, primitive, and darkly magical. Parts of it remind me of the most stripped down moments of Swedish greats Abruptum. True outsider art from a true outsider. What few details I’ve gotten about who Forest Child is have been puzzling but not particularly enlightening. I’m happy to keep it that way, and even happier to present this brilliant music to the world.
- Damian Master, September 2023.
One morning I was checking my email and got a message from someone I didn’t know. Happens all the time. It was in reference to Colloquial Sound Recordings and local black metal. I answered that I ran the label, and have for the last twelve years. I said I wasn’t aware of many other black metal bands in the area, and that CSR is sort of an isolationist thing. It’s said that no man is an island, but I would very much beg to differ. The responses that followed were cryptic. What crashed onto my shores next was song after song. Some complete, some sketches, all of them intriguing. All of them sent to me by a person going by Forest Child. Perfect. The music was getting stranger. I checked my mailbox one sunny afternoon and found a manilla envelope with a CDR and a note. It was Forest Child, asking if his music would be fit for CSR. I listened and was instantly locked into the primitive power and raw emotion. Forest Child remained enigmatic. I kept in contact. I met him only once, in passing. He knew who I was, and as he walked away, he mentioned who he was. I had gathered that he was new to town, and was searching on Metal Archives for labels and bands from the area. More songs kept coming. I couldn’t get a grasp on how old he was, or what he was about. He didn’t look like I thought he would, and that’s a very good thing to me. One day I got a message with five songs, “Damnation Falls.” This was it. This was the debut release. Depressing Oceans is the pure distillation of all that drew me into black metal in the first place. It is raw, primitive, and darkly magical. Parts of it remind me of the most stripped down moments of Swedish greats Abruptum. True outsider art from a true outsider. What few details I’ve gotten about who Forest Child is have been puzzling but not particularly enlightening. I’m happy to keep it that way, and even happier to present this brilliant music to the world.
- Damian Master, September 2023.
One morning I was checking my email and got a message from someone I didn’t know. Happens all the time. It was in reference to Colloquial Sound Recordings and local black metal. I answered that I ran the label, and have for the last twelve years. I said I wasn’t aware of many other black metal bands in the area, and that CSR is sort of an isolationist thing. It’s said that no man is an island, but I would very much beg to differ. The responses that followed were cryptic. What crashed onto my shores next was song after song. Some complete, some sketches, all of them intriguing. All of them sent to me by a person going by Forest Child. Perfect. The music was getting stranger. I checked my mailbox one sunny afternoon and found a manilla envelope with a CDR and a note. It was Forest Child, asking if his music would be fit for CSR. I listened and was instantly locked into the primitive power and raw emotion. Forest Child remained enigmatic. I kept in contact. I met him only once, in passing. He knew who I was, and as he walked away, he mentioned who he was. I had gathered that he was new to town, and was searching on Metal Archives for labels and bands from the area. More songs kept coming. I couldn’t get a grasp on how old he was, or what he was about. He didn’t look like I thought he would, and that’s a very good thing to me. One day I got a message with five songs, “Damnation Falls.” This was it. This was the debut release. Depressing Oceans is the pure distillation of all that drew me into black metal in the first place. It is raw, primitive, and darkly magical. Parts of it remind me of the most stripped down moments of Swedish greats Abruptum. True outsider art from a true outsider. What few details I’ve gotten about who Forest Child is have been puzzling but not particularly enlightening. I’m happy to keep it that way, and even happier to present this brilliant music to the world.
- Damian Master, September 2023.