Progressive melodic doom metal Gods Cirith Ungol are back with their first studio album in nearly 30 years! Woo! Woo! And Greg Lindstrom is back as well!!! To hardcore Cirith Ungol fans, this is no trivial thing to get excited about, since Lindstrom played rhythm guitar and synthesizer and wrote every song on the first CU album, Frost and Fire (1980), along with having song writing credits on the group’s next two studio releases, King of the Dead (1984) and One Foot in Hell (1986).
He’s joined by singer Tim Baker and drummer Robert Garven, both of whom are on every Cirith Ungol release, along with lead guitarist Jim Barraza, who took Jerry Fogle’s spot as lead guitarist on the group’s previous studio album, Paradise Lost (1991), and semi-youngun Jarvis Leatherby of Night Demon (among many other new old school metal bands) on bass.
For the uninitiated, Cirith Ungol formed in Ventura, CA in 1971 and had one of those start-stop careers, where thanks to a variety of problems, mostly having to do with the annoying and difficult nature of the music industry, the group only managed to squeeze out four studio albums before calling it a day in 1992, garnering a cult following on par with umpteenth tier club metal acts like Satan, Tank, Pagan Altar, and Manilla Road in the process. However, after a quarter century and the public’s newly found interest in metal from the past, Cirith Ungol has returned! And, with only five studio albums and a recently released live album called It’s Alive, their discography is a cinch and a joy to get into.
The new Cirith Ungol, Forever Black, is no exception to this. Old fans will not be surprised at all, as that recognizable Ungol style is instantly on display. Those multi-part songs with the very 70s riffs which manage to avoid Sabbath plagiarism, the highly melodic and flowing classical guitar solos, and those high pitch caterwauling vocals, which I have learned to tolerate in order to enjoy the group’s song craft and musicianship.
What’s kind of curious, though, is that, rather than just singing about fantasy themes, some of the lyrics appear to be somewhat darker and even philosophical, with “The Fire Divine” warning those who are foolish enough to believe in an ever loving God that “your heaven’s just a fantasy/to turn to in your fear/a feeble straw to clutch on/when you know that death is near.”
On a lighter note, “Legions Arise” tells Ungol’s own fans, the “legions of Chaos” of the song’s namesake, to “arise from the grave”, because “as chaos descends, false metal will fall.” I wonder if Ungol’s “legions of Chaos” will duke it out with Manowar’s “Army of the Immortals” over metal supremacy. The track “Stormbringer” (no, not the Deep Purple song) is, of course, about about Elric’s living, soul-consuming black sword. And “Nightmare” is clearly written from the perspective of a guilt-ridden Elric, who is “a specter in the master plan, sent here from below.”
And, as typical of every Cirith Ungol release, the cover is a painting of the Elric character from Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Elric of Melniboné saga, which I’ve always found ironic, since the group’s name is from Lord of the Rings, and Moorcock hated Tolkien. On the previous five releases, the covers were just swiped from the book covers that were painted by Michael Whelan, but in this case, the group used a 2019 Whelan work called “Elric in Exile.”
But, in any case, Forever Black is just a good ol’ fashion heavy rock record, which eschews any of metal’s iterations beyond 1978. And at just under 40 minutes long and with only eight songs (well, nine if you count the intro track “The Call”), it’s not much of a chore to get through. I still would recommend people start with King of the Dead first, but Forever Black is a nearly just as perfect distillation of the group’s sound. Screw the great old ones; I’m an agent of Chaos!
Edwin Oslan
Revenge of Riff Raff
10th June, 2020
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