Album art by Jan Yrlund

Style: Film score, Celtic folk, contemporary classical (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Nightwish, Delain, Jonathan Hultén, Howard Shore
Country: Finland / The Netherlands
Release date: 20 Feb 2026

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Across the wide spectrum of metal subgenres, few have acquired as much of a wimpy, un-heavy reputation as symphonic metal. True, there are more extreme symphonic bands that buck the trend (e.g. Dimmu Borgir), but when the average fan hears the term “symphonic metal”, their mind immediately leaps to acts like Nightwish and Epica – groups that are often put down by purists as primarily purveyors of poppy melodies, pretty faces, and pompous puffery. To their detractors, bands such as these are barely even metal at all, clinging onto a semblance of cred by throwing in a few distorted guitars as an afterthought. Perhaps it is such perception that led Martijn Westerholt, leader of Dutch symphonic metallers Delain¹, to have a bright idea: what if he made a project that took all those “un-metal” accusations and just leaned into them as hard as possible? What if he focused in on everything flowery and pretty and dispensed with that vestigial guitar business entirely – symphonic metal, minus the metal?

Such, I presume, was the thought process behind Eye of Melian, a project founded by Westerholt alongside Finnish singer Johanna Kurkela². The group’s sound can best be described as “fantasy music” – a precise blend of Wagnerian orchestral grandiosity with gentle, emotionally resonant Celtic folk touches that was popularized by Howard Shore in his Lord of the Rings soundtracks. Indeed, the band are clearly massive Tolkien nerds in general, judging by the fact that their name is taken from Tolkien’s character Melian, one of the divine Maiar of the First Age who taught nightingales to sing with her supernaturally beautiful voice³. While Forest of Forgetting doesn’t seem to be a full-on Silmarillion concept album a la Nightfall in Middle Earth, the fantastical imagery of the twilit forests of the First Age is woven deep into the album’s DNA. This is an unabashedly escapist record, one meant to sweep listeners away from reality into magical, snow-covered woods and quiet starless nights. But do its soft yet sweeping symphonics stay in one’s psyche, or is this Forest destined to simply be Forgotten?

At its core, Forest of Forgetting is a deeply pretty record, one whose ethereal, shimmering songcraft feels far more suited to Lothlorien than it does, say, Rohan or the Shire. This is in large part due to Kurkela’s floaty, gossamer-light vocals, which drift and swirl around every melody with a gentle, almost fairylike whimsy. It’s the sort of performance that automatically makes the listener picture Kurkela waving her arms about on a misty moor in as mystical a manner as she can muster, complete with loose, flowing white sleeves that trail behind every smooth-yet-dramatic gesture. Westerholt’s keys, meanwhile, serve as the skeleton on which many of the songs’ musical motifs are built, and it’s clear these songs were written on piano first and foremost before all the bells and whistles were added on top. Many of the tracks, such as opener “Of Willows and Shadows” and “The Buried Well”, start with a lovely bit of isolated piano work that immediately conjures forth a sense of mystique and magic, pulling listeners into their own world from the jump, It’s clear he’s got an instinctive sense of both how to craft immediately engaging, pretty melodies and how to iterate and expand upon them.

Speaking of iterating upon melodies and adding bells and whistles, all this sylvan fantasy isn’t complete without a grandiose orchestra to add the “epic” factor to it all, and this too, Eye of Melian provide in spades. The arrangements and orchestrations come courtesy of one Mikko Mustonen, a man with extensive experience constructing big ol’ synthetic orchestras for the likes of Sonata Arctica and Ensiferum, and said experience clearly shows in the amount of effort he’s put into every nook and cranny here. Take the way “Symphonia Arcana” bolsters its grandiose swells of strings and brass with big, pounding Epic Fantasy Drums™, building crescendos practically meant for dramatic aerial shots of rugged New Zealand landscapes, or the way “Blackthorn Winter” abruptly breaks from gentle mystique into a stirring violin solo backed up by some absolutely thunderous timpani hits. Plus, the production work coats everything with a thick, shimmering haze of reverb, further enhancing the otherworldliness of it all; every piano passage echoes out like a pebble dropped in water, and every explosive flourish of brass and choir reverberates like the echoes off a dramatic cliffside.

And yet, for all its expert craftsmanship, there’s a certain feeling of… anonymity that hangs over much of Forest of Forgetting, songs blurring together into a veil of beige sameyness that clouds its otherwise-vibrant forested soundscapes like an ill omen. Sure, its approach to “fantasy music” offers little in the way of surprises, with most of its melodies and arrangements hewing close to the “3 hour orchestral music compilation for D&D sessions” playbook, but this is fantasy, a genre where a bit of excessive tropiness can easily be forgiven with sufficient levels of heart-on-sleeve sincerity and skilled execution. No, if I were to pinpoint a primary source of this insidious flaw, it would be the limitations of Kurkela’s voice. She’s good at what she does, to be sure, but “what she does” is essentially restricted to a gentle, breathy featherweight soprano whose occasional flights into impressive high notes aren’t enough to compensate for its fundamental lack of power. Thus, even when the instrumentals aim for a darker, more dramatic tone (“Child of Twilight”), the vocals don’t feel like they’re engaged in anything more strenuous than sitting in a tree idly composing Sindarin poetry. The exception that proves the rule comes in mid-album highlight “Dawn of Avatars”, an absolute banger in which guest Patty Gurdy‘s powerful, brash vocal timbre, alongside Troy Donockley of Nightwish piping for his goddamn life, throws the song into harsh relief as the only part of the entire album that succeeds in evoking the life-or-death stakes that form the backbone of any truly epic tale of legend.

In Forest of Forgetting, Eye of Melian have certainly succeeded in providing an immaculately crafted work of elven-inspired songcraft, an undeniably beautiful listen with nary a sour note to be found. Yet, when put next to its inspirations, it becomes apparent that though its orchestrations can gesture at grandiosity, in the end they’re writing checks that its perpetually-pretty vocals and melodies can’t always cash. Left unable to fully muster the oomph required for true epic fantasy, yet too sweeping and trope-filled to subsist on atmosphere alone⁴, the album is left as little more than yet another lovely, well-made yet inessential piece of background music for your next D&D session. For fans of the fantastical, feel free to embark on a foray through the Forest of Forgetting; it’s quite the enjoyable little hike. Just don’t expect much of what you hear there to stick in your memory for long.

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Recommended tracks: Symphonia Arcana, Dawn of Avatars, Blackthorn Winter
You may also like: Marjana Semkina, iamthemorning, Tvinna
Final verdict: 6.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Napalm Records

Eye of Melian is:
– Martijn Westerholt (piano, composition)
– Johanna Kurkela (lead vocals, violin)
– Mikko Mustonen (orchestration)
– Robin LaJoy (lyrics, backing vocals)
With guests:
– Patty Gurdy (vocals and hurdy-gurdy on “Elixir of Night” and “Dawn of Avatars”)
– Troy Donockley (woodwinds on “Elixir of Night” and “Dawn of Avatars”)

1. Fun fact, also a co-founder of Within Temptation, though he left that group way back in 2001. ↩︎
2. Fun fact, also married to Nightwish leader Tuomas Holopainen, with whom she also works as part of the progressive folk group Auri. ↩︎
3. Fun fact, also the mother of Luthien, whose romance with the mortal Beren would become the centerpiece of one of Tolkien’s best-known non-LOTR works. This also makes her Elrond’s great-great-grandmother and- okay, I’ll stop now. ↩︎
4. One might compare this to Jonathan Hultén‘s excellent Eyes of the Living Night, which I reviewed last year. While that album aims to evoke a similarly tranquil, starlit fantasy atmosphere, it does so with a great deal more originality in its musical textures and songwriting, while also keeping its scope small and intimate as opposed to Eye of Melian‘s sweeping fantasy orchestras. ↩︎