Autrest – Burning Embers, Forgotten Wolves
Release Date: 5th September 2025
Label: Northern Silence Productions
Bandcamp
Genre: Atmospheric Black Metal, Melodic Black Metal, Folk Metal.
FFO: Cân Bardd, Saor, Aara, Caladan Brood, Elderwind, Eldamar.
Review By: Rick Farley
Founded in the winter of 2022, Brazil’s atmospheric black metal solo project, Autrest, is darkly alluring music inspired by nature and shaped by the sounds of the forest and mountains. Having already released their debut album Follow the Cold Path in 2023, primary songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Matheus Vidor returns with a warmer, more textured journey into atmospheric black metal. Burning Embers, Forgotten Wolves releases via Northern Silence Productions on Sept 5th, 2025. Prepare for solitude.
The mix of tempered brutality, melancholic atmosphere, resplendent beauty, and the physical world outside of enclosed walls is a sound that always feels authentic. Harsh, yet lush and textured, soothing yet extreme and unrelenting, this world is organic yet ethereal. The creation of a soundscape representative of your surroundings and your connection to nature in the genre of black metal works incredibly well. The blackened guitars searing fiercely through the flesh, with colossal walls of melancholy reigning down upon you with the weight of mountains. The shrieking screams, remind of a wounded animal hiding in the trees preparing for defence. The spellbinding melodicism mixed with utter rage mystifies before it strikes you. The energetic rhythm section is the driving force, urging you to continue further. The bass is pulsing, and drums are pounding while you navigate through the shadowy murk and the moonlit glow. You can intensely feel this.
Compositionally, this record is expertly crafted. The haunting sombreness of acoustic guitar and synths during opening instrumental Lobos (Offering) weighs heavy on the emotional side, gradually bleeding into Ashes From the Burning Embers. A mid paced swaggering of frosty black metal that peels back the layers of its forward moving atmosphere right from the onset of distortion. Only two minutes in, an acoustic passage walks us through an open field to stare upon the expansive landscape, evoking feelings of both isolation and tranquillity. The intensity carefully amps up to heights of blackened doom, tinged with majesty as well as woe. This is a fine line between ugly and elegant, clearly showing the songwriting capabilities of Vidor. Ruins of the Lost, while still symphonic and mystical through its playful melodies, shows little remorse for its malevolence. The course, growls are somewhere between pained and hellish for its majority, however there is a section where clean chants are heard in the background, which leads to a bouncy rhythm section with burning tremolo picked guitars. The track closes with a dancing woodwind instrument passage that previously flickered in the background during more harsh parts of its soundscape, now alone guiding the listener to their next journey.
Besides writing, and performing the entirety of Burning Embers, Forgotten Wolves, the record was also recorded completely by Vidor, then mixed and mastered at Voidsea Studios with cover art by August Cappelen. With a deep connection to nature, the record feels introspective, immersed in depth and journey filled though its warm tones, beautiful soundscapes, and huge modern production. It feels like it’s living and breathing, with waves of thawing winds in a frozen forest on the verge of changing seasons. The only issue I have is the vocals seem a little low in the mix, which could very well be a purposeful atmospheric choice. Either way, the record sounds great.
Autrest isn’t reinventing the wheel or really doing anything new on Burning Embers, Forgotten Wolves, but what it does do, it does very well. For that alone, this record is worth your time. If you want an emotionally charged trip into the blackened forest, where you’ll find plenty of foreboding dread as well as entrancing serenity. This one is for you.
(4 / 5)
