Bring forth the absinthe, for a new age is upon us. The Gentlemen's Club of A Forest Of Stars have reconvened to forge a new, mind-corrupting compendium of abominable oracles, intimations of bedlam and opium-induced attempts to salve the most restless of souls as their day of judgement draws ever more close.
A band who, like Oranssi Pazuzu, have reinvented black metal entirely on their own, visionary terms, Leeds' A Forest Of Stars have spent 11 years building singular universe - a Victorian world of wonders and terrifying premonitions where spiritualism, apocalyptic forewarnings and psychological screeds run rampant. From their painstakingly created, unforgettable videos and immersive live shows - this year’s Bloodstock performance being a case in point – to their white-knuckle, dramatic albums where strings and progressive elements rise up on a tide of cataclysmic fervour, every aspect of A Forest Of Stars becomes an experience, a journey into turbulent states of mind where psychedelia and psychosis combine to ecstatic effect.
With the band’s fifth album, Grave Mounds And Grave Mistakes, due to be released via Lupus Lounge/Prophecy Productions on September 28, we have a special preview in the wracked yet rapt form of the track, Decomposing Deity Dance Hall. It’s a nine-minute epic whose acoustic into and sweetened drizzle of violins become the calm before the storm whipped up the fraught, seer-like vocals of Mr Curse, as new, richly textured sonic vistas open up, only for fissures and hellfire to erupt.
Explains singer Curse: "This song is a paean to mental, physical and spiritual decay; the idea that if humanity can concoct an iteration of a god, then by extension she can then strip that god of of any misbegotten authority and trample it righteously under foot or hoof where it belongs. The idea of a Decomposing Deity Dancehall is that of humanity placing all pie-in-the-sky monotheistic salvation brands (TM) at least six feet into the ground where they rightfully belong. No more self-righteous automated pardons based on meeting certain phallus-centric criteria. An enlightened humanity dancing, upon a mass grave of excommunicated hypocrisy."
Put that in your opium pipe and smoke it, and lose yourself to the bowel-gripping grandeur of Decomposing Deity Dancehall below!
A Forest Of Stars play Damnation Festival on November 3
Visit A Forest Of Stars' Facebook page here
And pre-order Grave Mounds And Grave Mistakes in all its many forms here!
