Forest Swords - Bolted (LP) - Light Indigo Vinyl

Forest Swords took his time between full lengths, and Bolted makes that patience feel like intent. Matthew Barnes, the Wirral-born producer behind the name, hadn’t released an album since 2017’s Compassion. In 2023 he returned on Ninja Tune with a record that feels hewn from rust and fog, equal parts ritual and wreckage. The title fits. These tracks sound riveted together from burnt metal and weathered wood, then sealed with a few coats of Liverpool rain.

Barnes has always lived in that liminal zone where dub’s negative space meets the grit of post-punk and the haze of early UK bass. Bolted leans into the weight of that equation. The drums are clipped and physical, like they were recorded in a stone corridor. Bass doesn’t just fill the low end. It moves the air. Melodic figures wander up through the mix like relics found under ash. You’ll hear smudged horns, scraped strings, choral shards that feel half sacred and half haunted. He is still that producer who makes samples and live elements feel indistinguishable, all part of one humid weather system.

“Butterfly Effect” set the tone when it appeared ahead of the album. It floats a ghosted voice over knuckled percussion and a bassline that dips like a trapdoor. The track never goes for a cheap peak. It coils instead, finding drama in restraint. That approach runs through Bolted. Barnes prefers pressure to blast. Songs often arrive on a single rhythm or drone, then gather grit as they move. Details accumulate. A hand drum appears, a guitar harmonic scratches the surface, a synth smears the horizon. By the end you realize the landscape changed around you.

Compared with Engravings, which had a weathered, coastal quality, and Compassion, which stretched toward widescreen, Bolted feels more grounded in body. There is a dance instinct here, but it’s the kind that moves shoulders and jaw before feet. You could trace a line back to dub’s echo chambers, to the lean menace of late 80s industrial, to the clipped swagger of early grime. Barnes doesn’t treat those references as mood board fodder. He folds them into his own grammar, so a single snare thwack can carry three decades of memory without turning nostalgic.

Ninja Tune’s catalog is stacked with artists who understand space and impact, and Bolted belongs in that lineage. The mix is a masterclass in negative space. He lets reverb bloom just long enough to leave an imprint, then cuts it before it turns pretty. The midrange stays murky in a way that begs volume. It is a record that makes immediate sense when you hear it on wax. If you care about low frequencies and air, the Bolted vinyl is worth hunting down. Forest Swords vinyl has always rewarded a good system, and this one is a subwoofer’s quiet flex. If you buy Forest Swords records online, it sits neatly alongside Engravings and Compassion, and it is the one friends will ask about when they notice the room start to breathe.

Barnes spent the years between albums on commissions and scoring work, and you can hear that sense of scene-building. Tracks often play like set pieces. A cluster of taiko-like hits will suggest a crowd outside frame. A distant choir will push against the beat like a weather front arriving early. Yet the album never tips into soundtrack vagueness. It speaks in concrete gestures. A tom roll here, a plucked string there, and a low siren that makes your neck tense. The architecture is meticulous, but the surfaces stay rough enough to catch skin.

It is also a record that respects silence. Several passages feel like rooms where someone just left. The residue of a voice. The shape of a chord hanging in the rafters. That patience makes the loud moments land harder. There is real catharsis when the drums finally swing open or when a synth suddenly brightens like a floodlight in an old warehouse. You get the sense Barnes is chasing texture first, emotion second, and letting melody find its way through both.

For crate diggers and casual listeners, Bolted is a clear recommendation. If you are browsing a Melbourne record store or scrolling through shops that ship vinyl records Australia wide, keep an eye out. Forest Swords albums on vinyl rarely gather dust. They end up in steady rotation, the kind of sides you drop after midnight when conversation dips and the room needs to change temperature. Bolted does that trick often. It feels ancient and modern at once, like something unearthed then rebuilt, bolted down so it can shake the floor without shaking apart.