Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The attack from the front, the wielding of the weapon flashing before your eyes from the confronted foe is far easier to understand than the one that comes from behind your own lines and takes you down in an act of cowardice and betrayal. The foe who attacks you full on, eye to eye, is far more worthy than the that you do not see coming, it is always better in such cases to Beware The Sword You Cannot See.
For A Forest of Stars, Beware The Sword You Cannot See marks yet another leap forward in their outstanding development as the new stewards of their chosen genre and it is a responsibility that they have taken on in earnest, the quality of music and lyric writing stands testament to that.
It is easy to see the appeal of A Forest of Stars, overwhelmingly good music, dipped in darkness but with and perhaps with a huge nod of appreciation to the likes of Sabbat and Skyclad, a certain lightness that shines through where the listener would least expect it. Metal may be the overriding system that arcs all the way through the album but like Skyclad, the undercurrent of the message of natural folk and nature being embedded within the sound sits easily within each cautionary tale that vocalist Curse has penned.
Magnificence can be easily missed when a band or artist is placed within a certain character trait, take away the music for example of the album and the lyrics to Beware The Sword You Cannot See are of beat quality standard. Tracks such as Hive Midless, the superb A Blaze of Hammers, Virtus Sola Invicta and the whole encompassing feel of the six part Pawn on the Universal Chessboard exemplify this. Why you would deprive the listener of such music though is quite beyond the realms of sanity and it is the addition of Kathryne, Queen of Ghosts’ violin, John Bishops’ stabbing, eerie like drums and the pianoforte of Henry Hyde’s Bronsdon that truly make the album something to scare the neighbours with, to shake the foundations of comfortable indecency and add an air of dark belief in the proceeds.
The future of the genre arguably is for A Forest of Stars to own, there is nothing stopping the music from being carried forward and crossing over many a unwitting musical soul. Just because some might like keeping one band in a tight conflicted arena, doesn’t mean the U.K. listener cannot appreciate the complexity of well written lyrics coupled with music that stirs the blood.
Ian D. Hall