At first glance, Beware The Sword You Cannot See could seem a little impenetrable and certainly intimidating. The consumer is first greeted with a 'high art' style album cover, no band name, or album title to be seen, the song titles are long and evocative, yet dipped in poetry. The 14 track album comes in at just shy of 1 hour 20 minutes and the first 5 songs do not run under 6 minutes in length. Finally, add into that the rich and textured sonic structure of these songs that contain a vast amount of weighty musical elements, which I will discuss eventually. Make no mistake, A Forest Of Stars are a black metal band. But this is a rich experience, they are evocative, they are thoughtful, they are nilishtic and yet somehow romantic. Or most certainly poetic. This is not your run of the mill shot of 'hail Satanica', this is something much denser. This is your fine aged cask spirit to your supermarket bevvy.
Yet, for all the splendour and wonder that might bring, it brings with it a great deal of complexities, a puzzling twist of layers just waiting to be unravelled and it can be quite difficult to know how to approach such a thing, or even where to begin. AFOS are another band to be featured here that are from Leeds and is a conduit for the creative muse of many (seven) musicians, who all have different visions, influences and styles. It is amazing that they have collectively managed to tame the beast of creativity and find its home in their wonderfully crafted music and Victorian concepts.
The album opens with the fantastic Drawing Down The Rain, which begins in a folky/shoegaze fashion that reminds me a little of Yes. Starry-eyed chords pull you in as the tension builds in the background. These chords are then matched by the guitar riffs and the whole thing begins to take on epic feel as the violins kick in. The intro in itself is a good introduction to AFOS, grand and splendourous, a tightly crafted affair and there is something very 'northern' about the sound, be it mountains or dales, it evokes images of grand sweeping vistas.
Eventually the tension is cut by a crushing distorted riff and the screeching vocals rip through the opening lyrics of the album. "I can hear them ranting/ Like a choir of angels, those cunts." The emotion wrapped in the delivery of those rather vicious words is disarming. Yet, the words themselves deliver the vocalist, Mister Kurse, to his descent into his entranced vocal performance which has a maddening urgency to them as he speaks the lyrics "Ragged faces turned up to the rain/ Staring down; drawing down the rain/ Staring down; drawing down the rain/ Drawing down the rain/ Drawing down..." The spoken word delivery of these lines reminds me of Aaron Stainthrope of My Dying Bride fame. However, the hauntingly sung backup vocals that are contributed by the violin player and backup female vocalist, Katheryne, Queen of the Ghosts, are a particular highlight as they seem to point towards the songs' questioning of the human condition; toiling for a higher power without question or cause. I, of course use the term higher power loosely here, meaning both a divine being, or someone of authority. I particularly adore the notion of heaven being an empty threat. The song runs the gamut of emotion as it draws to a close on the beautifully played violin strings.
Hive Mindless is another emotional bludgeoning of a dizzying array of musical styles. However, it's jazzier interludes remind me of modern era Opeth, or indeed Genesis. Although, at around the 4:45 mark, the breakdown throws a left turn into that musical formula by throwing a riff into the breakdown that sounds like something from a brooding 90's psychedelia with a swirling grunge sound that would not be amiss in an Alice In Chains track, until the song is brought to its relentless crushing end.
A Blaze Of Hammers is perhaps the most directly aggressive offering on the album. It's opening barrage of bile-filled words, "Fuck you and the worms you rode in on", do a lot to set the tone of this particular ode to nihilism. Mister Kurse is quick to deliver his fantastically poetic spoken vocals again as he asks; "If all is soil of creation/ And all our every particle/ All intermingled is but a happy dust storm/waiting to disappear up a willing god's nose - then where should the faithful stand?/ I suppose it's irrelevant to a grain of sand."
The album then moves on to what I might have to consider my favourite song from the album, Virtus Sola Invicta, it was certainly the first to really get my attention lyrically. However, the lovely people at Prophecy (AFOS's label) have posted this wonderfully helpful lyric video, so I will just let that do the talking here.
The song itself rests heavily on a seductive and slightly unhinged performance from Mister Kurse and the amazingly poetic lyrics. Musically, while still being very much a black metal song, it feels a little more proggy. Again, comparisions can be made to early Genesis and the poetic storytelling style they held, I also guess it would be wrong to not mention My Dying Bride again, who have also often dabbled in the poetic.
The dissonance of Proboscis Master Versus The Powdered Seraphs cannot be escaped. There are some amazing uses of feedback on the guitars, while the snare is bold and big evoking the 80's snare. In my opinion the guitar work, which is moody and bluesy, once again has that 90's feel to it. All the while Kruse spits poetically vicious lyrics over the top and a haunting chorus of voices builds. This track is probably quite unlike any on the album, certainly unlike any of the ones heard so far, although the black metal stylings and motifs do make an appearance towards the end as we are once again seen out by violins that lift this song up to new emotional heights.
The next 6 songs work together to create the progressive opus of this album; Pawn On The Universal Chess Board . The first of which, Mindslide, is a haunting, ambient affair with vocals provided by the siren that is Katheryne. The song has a spectral feel, perhaps invoking a little of Floyd or once again that blackgaze/shoegaze vibe. The second part, Have You Got A Light, Boy?, takes the harmonic chorus of the first part and teams it with the powerful guitar tone that this album is filled with. Finally, Kurse returns to the vocal position as he spits "Are you a little lost, robot?/ To terminate? Stay resident?" This song then begins to build towards the third part, Perdurabo.
Perdurabo, which comes from the latin "perdūrō" meaning "to endure", was also the name Aleister Crowley took upon joining "The Golden Dawn." The song eludes to both meanings with the lyrics "I will endure. All Father" and "Can you see through the fast approaching dawn?" Thematically, it continues the story of a being or a collection of beings that seem to rally against the machinations of a higher power and try to find their own way. Musically, there are creepings of the band moving away from the lofty and 'hard to corner' sounds of prog and back to metal.
The heavy blues bassline and stuttering drums in the intro to part 4, An Automation Adrift, once again gives this song a 90's vibe. Although lyrically, it's probably one the most arresting songs on the album. Kurse's performance is exhausting in its quivering poetic insanity. "Birthed across nowhere to ride the moon through phases/ Fazed in phases rolling nervous / lunar tick/ patchwork cut and paste parchments to feed faith's guttering furnace. /A cracked clock face nervously ticking away the night." I love the interesting plays on words in this song "lunar tick/lunatic" being a personal favourite. As the song draws to a close it erupts delightfully into full folk mode, making me think of once again of bands like Yes and,on the darker side of things, My Dying Bride.
Part 5, Lowly Worm, has the name of a grindcore song and sounds like one too. This track is unapologetically heavy and would make Napalm Death proud. However, part 6's Let There Be No Light, is back to the haunting ambiance and poetic storytelling. The music once again has a vast eerie quality to it and it is beautiful! I cannot help but think of Trespass by Genesis whenever I hear Pawn parts 1-6, a beautifully crafted prog story all in all!
The closing tracks continue the haunting, goth rock infused psychedelia that this album offers alongside its black metal plate. Gestation is a wonderful violin piece whereas Cataflaque Caravan Quandary is another dramatic melancholic poem set to a misty prog wonder, bringing to mind Floyd once again. The same could be said of the final track, Plastic Patriarch Lynch Squad (Enduring December) which is another gigantic prog track with Katheryne once again providing those killer vocals.
Overall....wow.....This album, I'll be honest, is a front runner for album of the year right now. It's just so huge. Having never heard AFOS before, I went into this expecting an interesting black metal album, but I'm not sure calling this a black metal album does this album justice. Yes, I will concede there are touches and flairs of black metal, but it is not these moments that lift this album above others. It is the proggressive elements and the dark psychedelia. As I have mentioned all the way through, this music harks back to the titans of early English prog; the genre bending of Yes, the folky elements of Tull, the storytelling of Genesis and the ambiance/psychedelia of Floyd, nevermind the melancholy of more modern names, such as Electric Wizard or My Dying Bride. It's like this album cherry picked of all the cool things about English music, blended them all together and created something that is as joyous as it is big.
Article By: Gary Lee (@thewheelbear)
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