UMUR "Thots" is the debut full-length studio album by Czech Republic progressive death metal act Forgotten Silence. The album was independently released by the band in July 1996. "Thots" was originally only available in cassette tape format but has since been released on CD too. Forgotten Silence had released a demo cassette tape album in 1994 called "The Nameless Forever...The Last Remembrance" but "Thots" is the first official album release by the band.

The music on the album is progressive death metal. The tempo is mostly kept mid- to slow paced but there are a few faster parts on the album too. The vocals are brutal growls (the odd sounding gurgling growls from the demo are gone) but there is also female singing which is great for the atmosphere and for the variation of the music. The use of keyboards for creating dark atmospheres is also very succesful to my ears. One of the most interesting features on the album is how the songs change between death metal parts and acoustic parts (sometimes with a jazzy touch) though. Sometimes many times within a song and sometimes even within riffs. The rythm section is also pretty exciting when they suddenly start playing what can be characterized fusion type parts. This might sound a bit confusing but the tracks are cohesive and cleverly composed. There are a couple of short atmosperic interludes between the more "regular" and longer tracks which provide the album with a nice flow.

The musicianship is excellent on this album. Great interplay and loads of innovative ideas.

The sound production is probably the weakest link on the album. It´s not bad as such but on the other hand it doesn´t really sound fully professional either. Considering the otherwise great quality of the music I´m able to forgive this minor flaw though.

While "The Nameless Forever...The Last Remembrance" held a lot of promise I wasn´t expecting to be blown away by "Thots", but I honestly think this album is quite fantastic and it fully deserves a 4 star (80%) rating. I find "Thots" highly recommedable to fans of mid- to slow paced progressive, dark and atmospheric death metal.

UMUR "The Nameless Forever...The Last Remembrance" is the debut release by Czech Republic progressive extreme metal act Forgotten Silence. "The Nameless Forever...The Last Remembrance" was originally released as a demo tape in 1994 but it was re-released/re-mastered on CD in 2005 with a different cover artwork by Epidemie Records. The CD release is limited to 500 copies.

The music on the demo is progressive doomy death metal. There are lots of atmospheric keyboards in the music which provides the music with lots of melodic and epic qualities. The vocals are death metal growls. Strange almost gurgling growls. I find them rather charming. The song structures are varied which helps keep the music interesting throughout the entire playing time. Some of the tracks serve as interludes between the longer tracks and there are both spoken word parts and shorter intrumental pieces among them. The longer "real tracks" are all heavy and doomy pieces of death metal. My favorite is probably "Diamonds of the Night" which actually features a guitar part that reminds me of Psychotic Waltz and I have to mention that guitarist Prochin really plays some great stuff throughout.

The musicianship is solid and the sound production is really strong considering that this is actually a demo tape from 1994 but I wouldn´t call it fully professional sounding.

"The Nameless Forever...The Last Remembrance" is a promising demo and it´s fully understandable that Forgotten Silence opted to re-release the demo in CD form. I´d say a 3 star (60%) rating is fair.