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Biography : Forest Of Shadows

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...

OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY (2005)