Artist: A Forest Of Stars
Title: Stack Overflow In Corpse Pile Interface
Type: Album
Label: Digital / Prophecy Records
The Gentleman’s Club Of A Forest Of Stars. My history with this strange, wonderful and unique collective goes back now some 15 years when their first two albums were re-issued by Lupus Lounge (a sub-label of the excellent Prophecy Productions) and I was handed them to review by Pete Woods of Ave Noctum. I was smitten. I have haunted their doorway ever since watching and hearing them mature, shift their shape gradually into the strange, magnetic waltz they now are. Eccentrics, adept musicians and somehow every one of the seven members brings something superb to the club, and their live performances can be…eerie and frightening. A mix of black metal, Victorian waltz, progressive post black metal, a subtle folk lament and both beautiful and corrosive vocals all tied up in a barbed wire bow of dense, deeply intelligent lyrics rooted in relentless, often vicious, wordplay. And their limited, hand crafted CD editions are something else..
And yet with all this somehow their emotional and musical approach transcends the dense progressive moments by effortlessly pulling you in.
This though, their sixth album, how is it? It’s always a moment of anxiety; a band you love release new music and…. will it be good? Will it be as good as the last album?
I have rambled. My apologies. You want to know why you should listen to this album.
This is why.
‘Ascension Of The Clowns’ begins with a slow, seemingly distant swell and then the signature sound of the violin of Katheryne, Queen Of The Ghosts turning in a slow, melodic waltz with the harsher but still melodic sway of the guitars of Messers T.S. Kettleburner and William Wight-Barrow. It is haunting, of course, beautiful but it calls the storm and soon we are in the turbulence as the the bass and drums, Mr Lungbutter and John ‘The Resurrectionist’ Bishop bring a focus and the riff hauls Mister Curse’s voice from its cell. Desperate, ranting, howling, crying the words tumble out through spittle flecked anger as the music swirls around him. The quiet moments are tense, because you know it will break and it does. ‘Bury yourself where no one will every find you. But no fucking about like. At this point’ The lyrics scatter like nails from a bomb but the music holds you full in its blast. The fasts bass steps, the hiss of the cymbals, the raw black metal riff clothed in velvet violin. Passages build; the music and the vocals together, locked in their dance, the keyboards ominous and dark, as though the vocalist is searching for breath and stalking around their black cell. It is so rich, so incisive that you are opened up as if by a sword you cannot see so that the violin is striking deep into your heart before you feel it. ‘Damned if you do, my dearest vermin. And of course just so damned if you don’t.’
With nary a break this underground stream of consciousness we are stricken by ‘Street Level Vertigo’ the opening of which; a rhythmic soundtrack, almost spoken word vocals, brings to mind the likes of Alan Moore & Tim Perkins collaboration ‘The Highbury Working’. Minds so open they emptied with only the bare minimum of prompting calls out Mr Curse and the current of the music just takes you away. Gentle and yet with a dangerous dark undercurrent, the calm melancholy of the violin and the dangerous undtow of bass and guitars pulling you under and out to sea. They really just sweep you away.
‘Mechanically Separated Logic’ begins with a pure prog sound, fluttering keys finding a smooth melody as the drums dance beautifully across it. We found ourselves in a battle of wits with processed meat….. human shields as if it’s even worth wasting a shield on. It is dark, cynical and bitterly, bitterly angry. And the music grows darker with it, a sudden rise of keyboards like a subterranean, forgotten church.
‘Roots Circle Usurpers’ begins with a curiously, strangely deeply organic sound, somehow evoking dark woods to me, somehow. Some way. The violin murmurs a folk lament almost. The tide of anger rises, the lyrics spiral and the music cranks up the tension. Just brilliant rippling runs and a swell of keyboards twisting tighter. Katheryne’s voice scolding softly mad goons rising, grifting shame… and the outrage tumbles down upon on. Jehovah not witnessed. No one likes a grass..
It was somewhere around here on first listen that the descent of this album became noticeable. We are travelling down towards something. Anger and frustration boiling the surface of a pitch black river but the current surging and swerving with grace. For a moment or two the waters slow. ‘Sway Draped In Vague’ is a quiet, slow, almost dreamlike moment as we enter it. Guitar like water echoing below the earth, a stillness settles and then the beautifully held vocals of the Queen Of Ghosts whisper and entice. A strange moment, hints harking back to The 3rd And The Mortal maybe. Even when the Curse returns, it is despair more than the anger, the loss of that last piece of hope. We are our fathers. We aren’t in heaven. And music that circles around this most curious of duets with such beauty, such deep understanding. A piano that sounds perfectly out of tune. Some soft bass notes, the echoing guitar. Absolutely stunning, strangely compassionate music as the tatters of a final hope slip through our fingers and hurtle into the close.
So where does this album leave us? At ‘Not Drinking Water’. The end of it all and a true tale from our world, sadly. Flowing, water, a lone violin, voices and splashing and a slowly gathering funereal tone that swells into dark, dark places. The ones in your mind. The least obscure, the most heart rending lyrics, a gathering steam of music condensces into a wave like rhythm. Mr Curse quiet in his intonation, the gorgeous, horrible tragic music that sways with you as his voice creaks and breaks around the words. Put faith in stone and rope to keep you down. Faith in nothing else…. we all waited up for you but the trail went cold before we chanced to look. It was the work shy rope which gave you up…And the music here once more absolutely open you up and carves deep into you. This is where the album leaves you. Emotionally gutted, the beautiful, horrific music circling slowly in your head tugging you down, down down. And, damn me but the last musical minutes of this utterly broke me. It offers no place to hide.
This is a long review to a long album. But this is A Forest Of Stars at their most personal and most beautiful and most fearlessly facing the haunts and the demons of the world and themselves. The beauty in the complexity but perfect layering and arrangement of the music is almost impossible to articulate and spliced to lyrics so twisted and obscure but also so open and human.
Well if this is indeed a forest of stars, Stack Overflow In Corpse Pile Interface is the singularity at the centre so dense is its character. And yet! Yet again this strange entity has done the impossible; crafted daunting music that will absolutely haunt your mind. Maybe the band is that contradiction; difficult music that simply sweeps you off your feet and carries you away in their own beautiful danse macabre.
The special kind of album that when it finishes you need to simply sit, in silence, and let the ghosts they leave behind talk to you just a little longer.
Gizmo
A Forest of Stars – Ascension of the Clowns [Official Lyric Video]
Walking The Liminal Space 