Review Summary: A Forest Of Stars presents: A Black Metal Horror Film
Withdrawing from their renowned psychedelic theatrics,
Dan Eyre,
Katie Stone,
Richard Blakelock, and
Jon Cumiskey, of
A Forest Of Stars depart from their usual Victorian aesthetics, crafting an altogether distinct, unnerving, cinematic experience. Although no less existential in nature, in many ways
The Water Witch is essentially the thematic counterpoint of the metropolitan debauchery and ecclesiastical bickering of its spiritual predecessor. Gone are the enchanting melodies and progressive eccentricities of the group's British Belle Époque motif. Sartorial elegance and cobblestone paths have been replaced with trackless mud and the specters of the barrows; in the place of cities and portentous vicars are swamps, marshes, and moors, with processions of hooded augurs in sylvan fenlands proclaiming the end of ages. If You think I'm taking the piss, You clearly haven't given this distinguished record a proper listen, nor read it's dreary, foreboding lyrics. Over the hills and away we go, pulled by horse-drawn carriage -- Victorian urban landscapes have long fallen beneath the horizon -- to the most untrodden of England's rural soil, deep into the darkest thickets, where only the faintest rays of the sun's warmth bleed through...
Children of the fog we are...
Who dare approach us with their candles
Silent as the grave we are
Hollow, watching, waiting
For the sun to rise on Solstice day
To lead our children away
To begin again, a world a'new
Kith and Kin, a Spring to view.
The Water Witch presents a unique set of aesthetics and themes. Implicitly, the attitudes of the legendary
J.R.R. Tolkien come to mind, with the struggle between the forces of nature and industry clashing, with nature ultimately prevailing. In a similar vein,
Pierre Hardot's The Veil of Isis classifies two fundamentally distinct dispositions on Man's relationship to nature: that of the "Orphic" and "Promethean". The Orphic attitude reveres nature, deferentially seeing nature as a source of great inspiration and mystical awe, a thing to be respected and preserved. The Promethean attitude views nature as a repository of resources to be utilized, a vast raw potential to be sublimated in the image of Man's will. On one hand, you have the animist, and on the other, the industrialist.
The Water Witch is firmly Orphic in both it's aesthetics and it's lyrical themes. Explicitly,
The Heavens In Traction depicts, rather vividly, nature's complete reconquest of the earth, and the ascendance of the spirits, both from the earth and from the disturbances of Man and civilization. Effectively, nature (now unconstrained) swallows the earth, seemingly in a proverbial act of cosmic justice. To be rather literal, this album's aesthetics and tone is rather akin to 2015's psychological thriller
The Witch, had the film not been written from a folkloric, staunchly Christian perspective.
The Heavens In Traction features a cohesive, dense production, with an array of bone rattling, audible bass, crunchy tremolos, lush acoustics, unsettling ambiance, discordant and disorienting violin arrangements, and spine-tingling industrial sampling. The ever charismatic
Dan Eyre delivers arguably his most maniacally sinister performance, from shrill wretching to (some of his lowest) guttural barks, with the usual affected, smooth cadence of his spoken-word narrations.
Hands that take, that break,
Hands that won't stop reaching.
Roots that tread, that stamp,
Roots that just won't stop pushing
Green force uncontained.
And the forest has now taken flight...
...Its restless, writhing roots uprising!
The Heavens In Traction bears only a modest degree of immediacy. Plainly stated, this album is a grower. While the absolutely massive
Winter's Burden and single-worthy
Teeth Of Oak are unequivocal highlights, it's necessary to bear in mind that this is certainly a case of the whole being greater than the sum of it's parts. With a work of such imposing and all-encompassing atmosphere, to isolate individual tracks from the broader context of the full experience would forgo the greatest quality of this work: it's immersion. You will have to familiar Yourself with it, allow it to creep in Your skull like the psychological thriller it is. Far from an easy listen, this is not a record to tap Your foot along to, this is a demanding stylistic vision, fit for bleak autumn nights. No track greater exemplifies the aesthetic and atmospheric traits of this record more quintessentially than
Asomatous Reawakening. The track is a hypnotic recursion of string arrangements and dense, eerie ambiance, layered and swollen for several minutes, culminating with the repeated austere incantation
"...And so You shall rise from this land..." Aesthetically, it symbolizes the incorporeal (asomatous) spirit, ascending from the earth, with it's instrumentation and recursive layering beckoning the spirit from the soil (hence its steady pace, and congested length), as if one is witnessing an ancient animistic ritual, concluding an otherwise fatalistic album with a transcendent resignation. This is the kind of context that one requires, and I fully encourage You be patient with this record, as it rewards subsequent listens. Essentially,
The Heavens In Traction is an intelligently designed musical equivalent of a horror film. Critical ratings are an inherently reductive act, and adequately appraising the subtle, subjective reality of an immersive musical experience is difficult to quantify. Regardless, whether enjoyed with Your eyes closed on a late-October night, or on a stroll through a dimly-lit forest, this album is a genuinely gripping, chilling experience.
The Water Witch have succeeded in distinguishing themselves as more than a mere side-project of yet another excellent group.
"...And so You shall rise from this land..."
Recommended Tracks
Winter's Burden
Teeth Of Oak
Asomatous Reawakening
The Soul Of The World
4.3/5
