Style: Avant-garde metal, atmospheric black metal, progressive metal (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Arcturus, Ved Buens Ende….., Thy Catafalque, Oranssi Pazuzu
Country: United Kingdom
Release date: 8 May 2026

---

“[Anthropologist Margaret] Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed … Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts”. While this assertion is somewhat fraught,¹ there is magic in the idea that the true marker of civilization is our compassion and connection to others. Many notions of what makes humans human boil down to our curious sociality, both with other people, other animals, and even inanimate objects. On avant-garde metallers A Forest of Stars’ latest record, Stack Overflow in Corpse Pile Interface, the band examine the nature of humanity, but instead of asking when one’s humanity begins, they ask what has to happen for one’s humanity to end. What happens to people when they are systematically stripped of sociality, of connection, of dignity?

Stack Overflow in Corpse Pile Interface is a heap of broken images mashed together in a passionate black metal-infused psychosis. Surrounded by insistent proclamations of the narrator’s severed identity, vocalist Curse spits venom through spoken word, at times gritting through teeth with quiet menace and at others howling in agony into an uncaring void. Wistful violins and tremoloing guitars act as interstitial stopgaps between vile descriptions of abandoned urinals (“Mechanically Separated Logic”), the traumatic discovery of truths not meant to be known (“Street Level Vertigo”), and prophetic ramblings foretelling humanity’s self-imposed end (“Roots Circle Usurpers”). Each track creates movement—or stagnance—through the use of motion, either allowing ideas to move freely in through-composed pieces among buildups and breakdowns or stewing on an idea to build tension.

While Stack Overflow does delight in grim melodics, tonality takes a secondary role in its compositions. Repetitive, ritualistic drum work in the first half of “Street Level Vertigo” beats stubbornly among coughing, half-broken machines, and guitars drone incessantly around hopelessly suffocating riffs; the tension becomes unbearable as Curse screams with increasing intensity. “Mechanically Separated Logic” lulls the listener into an apathetic waltz, sullen eyes glazed over among a lilting arpeggio flanked by psychedelic guitars. What awakens the listener from their trance is a defeated, fatal whisper from Curse and a stomach-churning industrial buzz that fills every corner of the track’s negative space. Closer “Not Drinking Water” carefully builds itself into a torrent of misery through repetitive, hypnotic percussion.

However, Stack Overflow does at times take shape from hazy paranoia into concrete melodics. The second-wave black metal riffage near the end of “Street Level Vertigo” hearkens back to the despondent ornamentation of Stormblåst-era Dimmu Borgir. The kinetic tremolos of “Roots Circle Usurpers” erupt in broken dams of acid among Curse’s insistent warnings about our mutually assured destruction of mother nature, all while sharp violin melodies evoke an ominous grandeur. “Sway, Draped In Vague” builds to an all-consuming climax where guitars try to scream, dampened by endless languor; vocals from Katheryne “Queen of the Ghosts” are drenched in heartbreak and defeat. The conclusion of “Sway” is immediately followed up with rain thudding carelessly against tin roofs and a crushing violin solo on the opening of final track “Not Drinking Water”.

These moments act as checkpoints among A Forest of Stars’ surrealist, fragmented vignettes. Tracks like “Ascension of the Clowns” and “Sway, Draped in Vague” are otherwise non-linear, traveling from space to space as tension crests and dies off, whereas “Street Level Vertigo” runs rings around its central ideas. At times, the instrumentation is almost delicate, like a specter gazing blankly from high upon an ever-dying post-industrial hellscape. Most of the time, this compositional approach affords a sense of levity to the music, relieving the listener of the record’s crushing heaviness. This happens most prominently in “Street Level Vertigo”, where its agonizingly repetitive (complimentary) introductory section has its tension broken by sweeping, held-out violins that observe the mechanical carnage from a birds-eye view. The reprieve is undoubtedly welcome, like finally climbing out of a pit onto familiar soil. At other times, however, the emotional gravity is deflated by a sense of dissocation: “Ascension of the Clowns” features violins in grand movements across its runtime, but its ethereal beauty feels detached from the decay and squalor it soars above.

Curse’s vocals are often the central facet of Stack Overflow’s compositions; despite his unwaveringly manic delivery, every line sputters with nuance and precision. At times, he comes across as subdued and menacing: “Mechanically Separated Logic” paints a vignette of an abandoned urinal with a hypnagogic apathy, subtly adding more drama and disgust to the vocals as the first few lines are repeated. “Not Drinking Water” sees Curse at his most despondent, as if he’s barely able to believe the words himself. Conversely, the end of “Street Level Vertigo” intermixes fervent, unsettling vocals reminiscent of a fire-and-brimstone sermon, complete with sonoristic violin squeals and dissonant chords. “Roots Circle Usurpers” is a thunderous climax with frightening howls of “WHITE! NOISE! MACHINE!” as the vocals descend into madness, finally repeating “I—am not I—am not I—am not I—am not I—am not I” with broken resignation.

A brutal, unforgiving existence severs the narrator from all that makes them human, including spirituality (“Ascension of the Clowns”), innocence (“Street Level Vertigo”), rationality (“Mechanically Separated Logic”), and nature (“Roots Circle Usurpers”). Technological imagery intersperses itself throughout each track, asserting that technology is at least partly to blame for these atrocities. Admittedly, though, the through-line is a bit unclear, hinting at computerized themes but never wholly bringing the digital into the record’s twisted world. Curse insists on his non-identity throughout Stack Overflow, pointing to an unwinnable battle for the self. On “Roots Circle Usurpers”, he proclaims ‘They and I (not I), we stumbled back through knots in time’, and “Street Level Vertigo” welcomes the narrator with ‘an apathetic maw, my not me, my not myself, and my not ever I’. “Sway, Draped in Vague” reflects a dismantled ego, proclaiming:

I know I am nothing
I know I am the nowhere all around me
I know I am not I
I know I am receding all around this.

Whereas “Sway, Draped in Vague” describes the death of the psyche, “Not Drinking Water” describes the death of the body, rife with images of suicide by drowning. The narrator can only find faith in what guarantees their self-destruction:

Lost to it all under such a weight of water.
The pull of the world and all its in-betweens.
Put faith in stone and rope to keep you down there.
Faith in nothing else.
Faith in nothing else.

Stack Overflow’s heavy subject matter is levied against a sardonically grotesque—and sometimes outright gross—sense of humor, making horn noises on “Ascension of the Clowns”, describing in detail a cocktail stick floating in a backed-up urinal on “Mechanically Separated Logic”, and tracing the lineage of a great fallen tree to the toilet paper it’s turned into on “Roots Circle Usurpers”. The humor feels less like a device for comic relief and more as a tool to highlight the stark absurdity of the narrator’s circumstances. 

One could assert, though, that the point of Stack Overflow in Corpse Pile Interface is to find the humor in these situations. Only so many tears can be shed over the fucked-up clown festival we inhabit before the point is belabored; if we don’t laugh at least a little at the absurdity, it will break us in the end. A Forest of Stars cover an overwhelming amount of ground in Stack Overflow’s squalid imagery: throughout its extended runtime, the group maintain freshness and variety in stream-of-consciousness songwriting while staying faithful to a singular sonic palette. On top of the instrumentals is a nuanced and frightening vocal performance, pouring the last traces of a disintegrating soul into each line. Stack Overflow in Corpse Pile Interface is equally crushing and rewarding—just don’t forget your humanity at the end of the ride.

---

Recommended tracks: Roots Circle Usurpers, Ascension of the Clowns, Mechanically Separated Logic, Street Level Vertigo
You may also like: Ashenspire, Virus, Pensées Nocturnes, Voices
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Facebook | Instagram

Label: Prophecy Productions

A Forest of Stars is:
– Curse: vocals
– John Bishop: drums
– Titus Lungbutter: bass
– Katheryne “Queen of the Ghosts”: violin, flute, vocals
– William Wight-Barrow: guitars, steel guitar
– The Gentleman: keyboards, percussion

1. This is two-fold: 1. There is no clear evidence that Mead actually made this point in the first place; and 2. These kinds of pro-social behaviors are present in other animals and isn’t exclusive to humans, making it a rather weak case as the start of civilization. ↩︎