Forgotten Tomb

Black Metal - Italy

With over 10 years of activity, 4 full-length albums, live shows all over Europe and a worldwide underground following, FORGOTTEN TOMB definitely deserves its cult status in the current Extreme Metal scene. With now-classic albums like the milestones “Songs To Leave” (2002) and “Springtime Depression” (2003), the band practically crafted and gave birth to a whole new sub-genre, now regarded as Depressive Black/Doom Metal; then it managed to evolve it, destroy it and reshape it with the highly acclaimed “Love’s Burial Ground” (2004) and the controversial “Negative Megalomania” (2007), breaking every kind of musical boundaries and expanding the sound of the band, incorporating in a unique brand a wide range of influences from the Metal, Rock and Dark fields.

What’s certain is that the band has always been and still is on top of the genre, as well as being one of the leading bands in the so-called third wave of Black Metal. With an history made of suicide-promoting lyrics and pictures, antisocial and over-the-top declarations, nihilistic attitude, self-destructive behaviours of band members (including self-injuries, near-death car accidents and hospitalizations) and fans alike, banned cover artworks, tons of hate-mails and death threats received, politically uncorrectness, as well as public fights with magazines, label managers and various kind of enemies, FORGOTTEN TOMB surely managed to keep an high profile and a bad reputation during all these years. Mostly due to miserable experiences with underground labels, the band never got enough advertisement and distribution, and the first 3 albums are currently out of print and highly sought-after by the constantly increasing legions of fans and collectors. Similar bad experiences with promoters and booking-agencies always kept the band quite underground and extremely underrated, due to the obviously restricted chances of promotion; a constant misfortune and the adverse geographical dislocation of the band (Italy surely isn’t your typical Black Metal country) didn’t help either. But being born under a bad star didn’t stop FORGOTTEN TOMB from becoming one of the most respected Black Metal bands of today, thanks to its constant “do-it-yourself” attitude and coherence, which led the band to play memorable live-shows all over Europe, often headlining or co-headlining big Extreme Metal festivals and concerts, even without a new album to promote nor a record-deal.

After celebrating it’s 10th year anniversary in 2009, the band will release a double live in studio titled “Vol.5: 1999/2009” in the early months of 2010, then it will embark on some european live-shows and it will record the long anticipated new full-lenght album “Under Saturn Retrograde”, a title which reflects the subtle, pessimistic self-irony of the band. If you still think Italy is all mandolin, sun and pizza, it means you haven’t heard of FORGOTTEN TOMB yet… You might find out an unpleasant world made of suburban misery, nihilism and utter negativity. You might find out why the band labelled its sound as “Southern European Black Discomfort”!