Opportunistic Thieves of Spring

The music will not really fit under any conventions, but who would have excpected this? The press release states, that the band wanted to try to combine the atmosphere and majesty of the universe with a depressive darkness and a spooky mood. It seems that A Forest of Stars achieved what they wanted, as you often feel left alone and drifting into nothingness. You surely will not get every detail of the composition when you first listen to it and it really needs some time to get used to it, but it is worth it!

The sound is defined through an oppressive black metal orchestration and furious vocals. The vocals are pending between really furious screams and quite mad growls, like those from Lifelover, but they sound much more convincing. The guitars are mostly “embellishment” and really humming and from time to time they draw back to leave more space for strings. The strings are mostly playing sad melodies and they remind me of Dornenreichs Her’ Von Welken Nächten.

The humming passages are sometimes loosened up through experimental passages which are quite unspectacular sometimes. This passages are, like nearly everything in the composition, quite long drawn sometimes and often repeated, but it is also quite unrewarding to wait until their end. If the wait is rewarded, it is really worthwhile as you can hear in Sarlife’s Money when female vocals are accentuating the ones of Curse.

Conclusion:

The record is as grandiose as difficult to access. Not everything is perfect though, but the record is full of atmosphere, thereby minimalistic and immersive, that you cannot head off yourself. A Forest of Stars achieved their goal to set the atmosphere of the universe to music, without loosing themselves into complex realms. They really set everything into music and so there are some drab passages, in form of long drawn, unspectacular passages or repetitions. Nevertheless a really good record!
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nilgoun - http://threnodies.com

My reaction to this unique English band's 2008 debut The Corpse of Rebirth was mixed. Certainly a curious sound coming out of the lot, but not something I felt repeatedly drawn towards or distracted by. In fact, I've been sitting on its follow-up for months, as my thoughts adjusted from being bored to intrigued to enamored and ultimately the state of 'vaguely impressed', with some exceptions made for the relative bloat of numerous tracks, an inescapable ennui brought on solely by the indulgent space in which A Forest of Stars attempt to drown you. Yes, it's a band with some LONG songs, often 13-16 minutes in fact, some of which truly stretching into madness, like the soundtrack to an entire life, a life erring on the side of dementia.

The Opportunistic Thieves of Spring (great title) will take its time with you, indeed, but there are enough hypnotic elements that you won't always lack a reward for the wait. "Sorrow's Impetus" glazes its extensive core with somber string and flute sections between tortured, discordant walls of minimal guitar patterns. "Raven's Eye View" offers a landscape of both tranquil vistas and the upheaval of the earth beneath you, while "Summertide's Approach" is wrist glistening sadness that devolves into proggy organ tweaking and an amazing bridge that reminds me of Sarke's Vorunah (with Nocturno Culto doing vocals). "Thunder's Cannonade" opens with several minutes of violin before the instruments wails along eerily to the black rush, soon broken once more to the delight and horror of unconsciousness. I didn't really care for the male/female vocal companionship in the languid "Starfire's Memory", and yet I absolutely loved the 16+ minutes, psychedelic psychosis and robotic vocals used in the doomed "Delay's Progression", which is not only the highlight of this effort, but of their career.

Without becoming technical or even complex, A Forest of Stars incorporate a large number of ingredients into their music, but I feel like the male vocals of Mister Curse, etc, succeed more than any other . The guitars are very rarely writing interesting lines, they serve only to complement the beats and the more organic tones of the other strings, so prepare for a lot of repetitious where it's not always the most welcome, and as a result the album can feel rather pretentious. However, taken as a whole lozenge, there are indisputable good ideas and an oppressive strata of immersion that seem all too rare in this field of music. This record could represent the parting of the womb to reveal the gore of the newborn, or the final ashes of a human being being returned to earth, and many seconds of triumph and defeat within those two parameters. Your emotional response might be just as varied.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

A Forest of Stars are one of the most interesting black metal bands on the British scene. Like Akercocke, a fellow British metal act, A Forest of Stars bring a lot of class to the scene in the United Kingdom. Their mixture of unusual music and stylish Victorian dress sense brings a lot of charisma and charm to the British side of metal, too. Their fresh take on metal music has been fantastic to witness and with the release of their 2008 full-length debut, entitled ‘The Corpse of Rebirth’, I just knew this band would have a lot to offer in the future. With their recent sophomore, entitled ‘The Opportunistic Thieves of Spring’, the band are living up to my grand expectations of them. When I first heard the debut, I was enthralled, but this album is even more engaging and even more weird than the debut! I wasn’t expecting these twists and turns to even occur on this album. What I had actually expected was an album that was in a similar mould to the previous but, perhaps apart from the growled vocals, the performance has seen a lot of new features added to it that give the band even more appeal and add to their sense of intrigue. Take songs like ‘Starfire’s Memory’, for example.

This song begins unlike any we’ve ever heard from the band. It’s very astral sounding due to the impact of the keyboards. The song begins much like you’d expect a Lunar Aurora song to begin. It involves the keyboards into the atmosphere of the album just as Lunar Aurora do with their older albums. The ambiance generated from the keyboards is a bit more subtle than perhaps Lunar Aurora’s keyboard generated ambiance, but the feeling of cosmic forces working their magic beneath the black metal base is very much alive and kicking. When the female vocals are introduced, the song becomes incredibly blissful and imaginative. Not only are songs like this engrossing, they feature such astonishing musicianship. I’m not used to British bands providing a cosmic force on the black metal scene, though this album isn’t necessarily straight-up black metal. There are elements of this album which are, like the occasionally rasped vocals, or heavy blast beats, but there are far too many intricacies to call this a black metal album per se.

In fact, as I can only say on the rare occasions that I find an album that does this, ‘The Opportunistic Thieves of Spring’ transcends the genre altogether because of its wider spectrum of influences which increases both the appeal and accessibility of this band, and this album. The album takes many different and equally appealing forms. This is known as a shape shifting album and it isn’t afraid to breach territories that the debut didn’t even seem to know existed. A Forest of Stars have matured and though the debut isn’t quite as highly received by myself anymore, this album has a longevity to it that the debut no longer has, even though it is still very strong. This album, with each of its six chapters, begins and ends with a thorough examination of the metal industry and how it can incorporate a wide range of elements into its soul and merge with them effortlessly when solid song writing is applied on an album as it is here. The cosmic journey of the fifth chapter isn’t the only song to use integral keyboards, as the sixth chapter indicates.

This song, entitled ‘Delay’s Progression’ mixes distant drums, subtle ambiance and eerie female vocals with acoustics over the top of all other elements. It has a sadness to it not witnessed in any of the other songs, though some of those also apply atmospherics dealing with melancholy, too. The song gradually transforms into something much bigger than I can handle through the use of unusual ambiance and fantastically strong guitar riffs and varied drumming, aspects that are applied to all songs, not just this one. The song also features vocals which deal with effects created in the studio. They’re distorted, though not in the way one would normally assume on a black metal album. They’re electronic sounding and add a strange sensation to the song. Given the cosmic vibe produced by the ambiance, these electronic sounding vocals enhance the general sound, though they do not last as the growls take over with incredible layering taking place on the song with a delightful string section becoming available again, as it was on earlier songs, and acoustics gently playing beneath the distortion of the guitars.

Earlier songs tend to feature a lot of the same characteristics, though they’re shaped in a variety of ways, giving the album a truly innovative feel. ‘Raven’s Eye View’, for example, has a brilliant woodwind section applied to it, giving it a very natural feel as we can hear the musician taking breaths and passionately playing this beautiful instrument. The woodwind elements are explored in all of the songs, giving this song its own individual feel. In fact, each song feels very personal and individualised as they each continue elements that don’t tend to feature as prominently, or at all, on other songs. This song also takes on a very Eastern feel, a theme not explored on any other song. It truly is a breathtaking display of musicianship and craftsmanship as the tribal drumming comes into affect, the string section adds even more beauty, a piano begins to take hold of the atmosphere and all hell breaks lose as A Forest of Stars really experiment with their sound. Comparisons to the debut are probably unwise since they’re two very different albums. This is a godly album, I must say. I loved the debut at first, but the dust did settle and whilst I do still love it, this album is far more important and is simply too divine to miss.