Out of nowhere in 2020 we got Hour of the Centaur, which was not just Hate Forest's first album in fifteen years, but their best work to date. Just two years later—after a very bad year in Ukraine—we get the follow-up Innermost, which is a pretty solid album, but suffers in comparison to what came before it. This is very much in the same style as Hour of the Centaur, but the songwriting has an unfinished feel, with songs often just stopping or fading out, leaving them unresolved. The riffs on this are gold, with a blistering, ripping guitar sound and deep, roaring vocals that sound indeed like "Those Who Howl Inside the Snowstorm." This is not as good as the album it follows, but I will be happy if Hate Forest can keep making albums of this quality.
