A Forest of Stars - Grave Mounds And Grave Mistakes (Digipak)

2018 release. The year is 1898. The Gentlemen's Club of A Forest of Stars invites you to a midnight performance of their latest maniacal masterpiece, Grave Mounds And Grave Mistakes. This exclusive brotherhood embraces the decadent, conflicting nature of their Victorian England, weaving sickly gin-tinged thoughts with bizarre, hypnotic melodies to fully express the decadence of their era. 120 years later, in the year 2018, A Forest of Stars would be nothing less than one of the UK's leading avant-garde black metal outfits. On Grave Mounds And Grave Mistakes, the septet takes William Blake's proverb of Hell "Exuberance is beauty" as it's principle, and celebrates lushness and excess in their music, lyrics and artwork. As an exploration of a struggle against insanity, it also represents the band's desire to revisit earlier works. A more atmospheric album than it's predecessor, 2015's Beware The Sword You Cannot See, this album has nods to the previous sonic explorations on 2012's A Shadowplay For Yesterdays. We also hear the band utilizing more open space and sound textures in addition to their trademark avant-garde black metal, dipping into the raw sounds of 2010's Opportunistic Thieves of Spring. The lyrics build upon themes of loss, death and inevitability, describing scenes of decay and destruction - magniloquent, abstract, metaphoric, with an abysmal message at it's core. Like the crazed tenant swearing he hears the dead man's heart, Grave Mounds And Grave Mistakes writhes upon the floorboards, bashing it's head in and screaming, "let me out".