REVIEW: A Forest of Stars - Stack Overflow in Corpse Pile Interface
And now for something completely different...
73:30 // May 8, 2026 // Prophecy
There are a number of reasons it’s quite surprising Stack Interflow in Corpse Pile Interface is a contender for my favorite album yet in 2026. First off, it’s avant-garde black metal, a style which, with rare exceptions like Dodheimsgard’s Black Medium Current, I’ve rarely fallen for. Secondly, this album’s tone is decidedly goofy, which isn’t typically my preference. And finally, the runtime stretches well over an hour, a duration which usually doesn’t work in a record’s favor for me.
Regardless, A Forest of Stars’ latest LP simply works. This might be less unexpected than it appears - while I’ve not previously been a full-blown fan of this odd British band, I have heard several of their other works and enjoyed them, if never to the point of frequent revisitations. Still, Stack Overflow in Corpse Pile Interface feels different - it entranced me upon first listen, and further spins have only made me more convinced that it’s a weird, weird, masterpiece.
The repetition of the word “weird” is not a mistake. The bizarre album title feels fitting - there are occasional black metal passages here which will probably feel rather “conventional” to listeners familiar with extreme underground music, but most of the album is far from the genre, dipping instead into nightmarish industrial segments, meandering psychedelia, and absolutely gorgeous violin-led prog. Indeed, the sheer beauty and repulsive ugliness on display, and the comfortable way in which the band maneuvers back and forth, is quite magical. The lyrics, too, at least what I can understand, teeter between espousing high-minded philosophy and spewing the lowest forms of vulgarity, mostly delivered in an unhinged ranting delivery (by the male vocalist, the female vocalist has a lovely voice and provides an interesting counterpoint).
All this swirling strangeness is unnerving, and it’s fair to say that A Forest of Stars don’t need typical extreme metal invocations of Satan or the slaughter of innocents ten times per minute (got ‘em!) in order to make their music feel quite vile. But creeping out the listener isn’t the album’s greatest strength - that would be such a long album managing to be so engaging throughout. These six tracks (all over nine minutes in length) flow so well, both in their internal structures and into one another, and even as such sonic territory is covered, there’s rarely any jarring transitions. Stack Overflow in Corpse Pile Interface is grotesque, it’s sublime, it makes me laugh, it makes me squirm - against all odds, it might be my album of the year.
9.0/10