Impaled Northern Moon Forest is a band. Kind of. Not really. But maybe just a bit. It consists of "vocalist" Seth Putnam, the madman behind such classic trashcore bands as Anal Cunt and You're Fired (among many, many others), and his friend Josh Martin on acoustic guitar.
The band was started one boring, quiet night in 1997 when Seth and Josh were attempting to lampoon black metal bands while a friend of theirs was asleep in an adjoining room. Seth grunted out retarded demon vocals while banging on his knees and mattress (for drum noises), and Josh tortured his acoustic guitar. They dubbed the experiment Impaled Northern Moon Forest, in honour of all those black metal albums, songs, and band names that contained one of the words in the band's name. However, it was just a joke, of course, and they didn't really expect to do much with it.
A few months later, there was a hardcore music festival in Rhode Island, featuring Seth's friend Spazz as the headliner, which had a few bands cancel and as a result was hurting for replacement acts. The promoter of the festival asked Seth if he knew of anybody that would play (probably a bad decision on his part), and after briefly consulting with Josh, and Seth's brother, the three decided to drive down to Rhode Island from Boston (stopping along the way to pick up some booze and cocaine) and play the festival as Impaled Northern Moon Forest. They included Seth's brother because he had a car and they didn't, and they needed a ride! Duh! (Seth's brother ended up playing keyboards at the show. I have no idea how it sounded, as no recordings of that show exist, but I can sleep well tonight knowing that it probably sounded like a great big bag of ass.)
Later in 1997, the band played a few more gigs, mostly opening for Seth's other band, Anal Cunt. After a while a self-titled demo tape surfaced, which ended up turning into the band's first actual release. Seth and Josh both lost their copies of the demo tape, which meant that they also lost the horrifically long original song titles, as well, so they had to come up with new ones when the demo was transferred to 7" vinyl for a limited release later. The finalized song titles are as follows:
DEMO #1 - Impaled Northern Moon Forest
- Grim and Frostbitten Moongoats of the North
- Forlorned Invocations of the Blasphemous Congregations of Lusting Goat Sodomizing Sathanis
- Gazing at the Blasphemous Moon While Perched Atop a Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very Forsaken Crest of the Northern Mountain
- Bloodlustfully Praising Satan's Unholy Allmightyness in the Woods at Midnight
- Nocturnal Cauldrons Aflame Amidst the Northern Hellwitch's Prepetual Blasphemy
- Transfixing the Forbidden Blasphemous Incantation of the Conjering Wintergoat
A second demo came forth into the night, as it were, a couple of years later, in 2000, the rest of the session from 1997 that produced the first demo. Its tracklist was thus:
DEMO #2 - Impaled Northern Moon Forest
- Masturbating on the Unholy Inverted Tracks of the Grim and Frostbitten Necrobobsledders
- Awaiting the Blasphemous Abomination of the Necroyeti While Sailing on the Nothernmost Fjord of Xzfgiiimtsath
- Lustfully Worshipping the Inverted Moongoat While Skiing Down the Inverted Necromountain of Necrodeathmortum
- Awaiting the Frozen Blasphemy of the Necroyeti's Lusting Necrobation Upon the Altar of Voxrfszzzisnzf
- Summoning the Unholy Frozen Winterdemons to the Grimmest and Most Frostbitten Inverted Forest of Abazagorath
- Entranced by the Northern Impaled Necrowizard's Blasphemous Incantation Amidst the Agonizing Abomination of the Lusting
- Grim and Frostbitten Gay Bar
Yes, those are the actual song titles. I'm not making this up. If you've ever had any interest at all in black metal, a lot of those words (or words like them) probably strike familiar chords within your grim and necro mind, eh? They certainly do in mine. They could've come only from Seth Putnam.
Both demos were put together (of all 13 tracks from both demos, the longest one runs exactly 1m26s in length) titled "Burn In Hell," and released on 7" vinyl in 2000, after which Impaled Northern Moon Forest played one of their final gigs, in Tokyo, Japan, no less, with Anal Cunt and 324. They broke up after returning from Japan, and collectively have not been heard from since, although for a few months in 2001, rumours of a reunion show circulated, but never actually happened.
Like most of Seth's other projects (other than Anal Cunt), this one wasn't meant to last, and so it hasn't. However, it is probably the most amusing thing he's been involved in thus far, and it grimly pokes a very large, very sharp stick into the eye of the concept of True Norwegian Black Metal.
Here's a bit of an update after many years: as of 2018, both Seth Putnam and Josh Martin have died. Putnam in 2011 from a relatively benign way of dying—a heart attack—while Martin died from an accidental fall off an escalator onto a food court table at the Providence Place Mall (shopping is grim and necro) in Rhode Island in mid-2018. That being the case, this joke band and all the other joke bands that fall under the Anal Cunt umbrella died with them.