Forgotten Pathways — Shrouded In Mystery

Shrouded In Mystery is an eight-track collection of early work from German dungeon/ medieval synth project Forgotten Pathways. With the compilation covering a fair bit of ground- going from out ‘n’ out medieval jiggery, onto more epic martial percussion lined fare, through brooding bell chiming and moody effects laden dungeon synth romps, onto gloomy synth marches edged with gruff vocal mumbles.

The CD appears on Germanys Dunkelheit Produktionen- with the disc being presented in an old-school grey-backed jewel case. Featured with the release is an eight-page monochrome inlay booklet- this has a write-up about the first demo & bonus tracks presented here, as well as a reproduction of the original tape slip and xerox flyers/ artwork.
 
Forgotten Pathways started in the late 1990s- behind the project is German Cedric Hommel, who also ran the short-lived Black metal/ ambient/ experimental label Irrlichter Records- which put out nine releases between 1999 and 2002. In all the project has just three releases to date- taking in two full-lengths and an EP.
 
We begin with the moody lapping sea sounds of “Incoming” it fairly soon moves into jaunting and jigging medieval synth scaping, which is edged by sparsely snapping 'n' fill lined drums. We have “Wuduealfren” which brings together forlorn synth piping plod, synthetic harpsichord pick, and skittering martial beats. There’s the bombastic synthetic string meets snaping ‘n’ bounding percussion of “Outro (Battle of Bradvellir)”. With the CD playing out with the marching/hissing beats and gloomy synth hover of “In Caverns Deep (Diff vox)”, which adds in low-key growling vocals towards its end.
 
Shrouded In Mystery is a largely consistent and fairly varied trip into the dungeon/ medieval synth genre of the late 1990s. It’s certainly made me curious to hear more of the project's later work, and of course the output from Hommel's Irrlichter Records label.