Black metal continues to divide itself along the lines of musical principles, with those who believe in helping the form progress and evolve one side and those who believe in staying true to its original values on the other. The UK’s A FOREST OF STARS belong to the former camp on its debut The Corpse of Rebirth. Indeed, the dirty power chords and raspy vampire screeching are often the only things connecting the record to black metal; much of the music revolves around cosmic atmospheres, epic song structures and sonorous violin – there’s even an Afro-Cuban percussion breakdown in “Earth and Matter.” The quartet isn’t much interested in eye-gouging negativity or shopworn Satanism, either. With songs entitled “God,” “Female,” “Male” and “Microcosm” there’s no lack of ambition in subject matter. No lack, either, of a sense of humor – with band pseudonyms like MISTER CURSE, MR. T.S. KETTLEBURNER and KATHERINE, QUEEN OF THE GHOSTS, it’s clear that British whimsy is alive and well in these supposedly dead souls. Combining the band’s lyrical and conceptual iterations with the expansive vistas across which the usual black metal beasts stride, The Corpse of Rebirth gives A Forest of Stars a brighter, more psychedelic world in which to spread its disease.
http://www.aforestofstars.co.uk
http://www.transcendentalcreations.com
