Review by Michael on October 10, 2025.

With Frosted Undergrowth the German label Folter Records has a new promising band in its roster who cannot take down a one-man pop-up tent but who can write cool music. As you can clearly read / hear out of the band name the guys from the Rhineland have decided to offer some cold and icy black metal to the hordes. Of course they don't reinvent the wheel with their third album "Unchained" but what the listener can find here is some atmospheric, hateful and quite fast traditional black metal.

Musically the quintet is heavily influenced by bands from the second wave of black metal which weren't everybody's darlings but more underground, such as Setherial, Taake or Helheim and also German bands like early Nargaroth or Darkened Nocturn Slaughtercult might have been more or less some kind of blueprint for them.

So you can see this sounds quite interesting and indeed it truly is. Right from the first riffs, the band rouses you with its heavy, grim and intense black metal and there is nothing that a traditionalist in black metal might be missing here.

Sometimes the sound is enlightened with some catchy, galloping sounds (e.g. in the opener "Bloodshed In The Name Of God") but most of the time this is really a manic massacre. One of the most extreme songs (and this sounds a lot like what Helheim did on their first album) is "Master's Dominion". The vocal performance is really brutal here and so are the guitars and drums. This is just like a blizzard blasting towards you and you have nowhere to find shelter. Okay, a little bit more variety in the songwriting might have been nice but still it kicks ass.

"Raise The Banner" starts quite punky and is one of the songs that you can fall in love (oh, sorry, I meant in hate) instantly. The guitar soli sound very skilled (what they do on the other tracks also) and the tempo changes give the track a certain uniqueness and flair. The chorus sounds pretty powerful and epic, I would say that early Desaster might have been a huge inspiration to raise the frosty banner.

Straight opposite is "Raven Pt. III" which starts quite melancholic and reveals a more catchy facet of Frosted Undergrowth. Here melodies are more in the foreground and this is a nice variation on the album and with that track the band shows once more their skills to write some more epic songs.

The production of "Unchained" sounds quite cold and a little bit sterile. Sometimes the music might have earned some more balance and bass in my opinion but with that production the coldness of the songs come over quite cool (sorry for that pun).

To sum it up, with their third album Frosted Undergrowth have written a really good black metal album with 7 tracks that are quite entertaining. Sometimes some more twists in the plot might have been nice but this album is much better than 95% of the black metal releases that come out every month.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10 pop-up tents