Biography
Forest of Shadows was founded in Halmstad, Sweden, back in 1997 by Niclas
Frohagen. The initial idea was to keep it a quite personal solo-project with
no ambitions whatsoever. This changed quite alot after the release of the
demo The Silent Cry in 1998 when multi-instrumentalist Micce Andersson joined with the intention to take the band to a higher level. During this
time the band also relocated from Halmstad to Gothenburg. Not only did the
band move geographically but also in terms of sound and this was
demonstrated on the '99 promo which featured a remake of the demo song "The
Silent Cry" as well as a cover of Katatonia's masterpiece "Rainroom". The
promo gained quite good critics and was later on very successfull on mp3.com
were it dominated the metal-charts for a couple of months. Somewhere around
that time Martin Claesson joined the band which suddenly had turned into a
rehearsing band with ambitions of doing live shows. It was also during this
time that the promo Under the Dying Sun was recorded. It featured a remake
of the song with the same name and was pretty much a showcase to attract
labels. After two less succesful gigs in 2000 the band decided to focus on
writing new fresh material that later on would end up on the mCD Where
Dreams Turn to Dust. Right before the actual recording of the new material,
Martin left the band due to various reasons. More problems arrived when the
label that was supposed to release the mCD in the first place suddenly had
no money and had to pull out. While the songs that were availible on mp3.com
gained more and more success there was still no label that would release the
mCD. As time passed, all hope of releasing the mCD started to fade away.
Suddenly the label Rage of Achilles showed up as the band's saviour and
offered to release the mCD. And so on the 29th of October 2001 the mCD
"Where Dreams Turn to Dust" was released.
The contract with Rage of Achilles included apart from the mCD a full-length
album. The creation of this album would later on prove to be the worst part
of the bands history. For some reason, all the problems involved in the
release of mCD had had an impact on the bands motivation and when it was
time to write new songs there just wasn't much motivation to pull it
through. Even though the basic ideas for the songs were done pretty fast it
took ages to get it all finalized. In the summer of 2002 Niclas moved to
Stockholm. This was the beginning of the end of Forest of Shadows as a
two-piece and in the autumn of 2002 Niclas decided to end the production of
the album all by himself. Everything was torn down and rearranged one final
time and a rather painful journey of putting it all together which would
turn out to take almost two years started. Just when it all was finished the
shocking news arrived that Rage of Achilles had decided to pull out due to
financial problems. Lucky enough a new agreement was made pretty soon with
the Finnish label Firebox and what could have been the band's worst nightmare
turned into a pretty happy end. The new album and debute full-length titled
Departure has new been scheduled a release on the 30th of October 2004 and
the rest belongs to the future...
Line-up
Niclas Frohagen - All instruments
Discography
Where Dreams Turn to Dust MCD (Firedoom Music, 2005)
Departure (Firedoom Music, 2004)
Where Dreams Turn to Dust MCD (Rage of Achilles, 2001)
Samples
Contact HOMEPAGE: www.forestofshadows.com
E-MAIL: Forest Of Shadows |
