Toghether To The Stars “The Fragile Silence”
The Fragile Silence will be released September 6th through Northern Silence Productions
Sweden’s Together For The Stars are a post-black metal act that takes the aggressive and harshness of black metal, and combines it with the beauty and emotional soundscape of shoegaze and post rock/metal. Since the band’s 2019 debut album An Oblivion Above, they would get some popularity and would help their name grow as the band’s sound would rise with the surge of the burgeoning blackgaze movement of acts like Alcest, Deafheaven, So Hideous, MØL and Harakiri For The Sky. The band would follow that up one year later with their second album As We Wither, released on Northern Silence Productions. Now, four years later, the band would return and release their third album The Fragile Silence. With The Fragile Silence, did the band create an album that delivered the devastatingly heavy musical journey of music and emotions?
Synth heavy, atmospheric ambience opens the track “Mercurius”. Transitioning into a driving, shoegaze alternative-like guitar section. The kick drum is punching through the mix, as the guitars are soaked in atmosphere. All among the distorted and agonizing screams of the album’s guest vocalist Franco Fuentes. The production is so grand and full. With guitars and ambience really filling the space, creating a larger scale sound. Especially, with the addition of violins in certain sections of the song with no screams. Adding a mournful and sorrow heavy undertone in the song’s delivery. A downtrodden, chorus-heavy guitar over spoken words, really adds a melancholic and dreary feeling. A wall of distortion and intricate and emotional heavy guitars of David Steinmarck & William Zackrisson, really add to the weight of the grieving and harsh vocals. Magnus Brolin Stjarne’s double bass kicking in at the halfway mark, also create a commanding, heart pounding drum piece, segueing into a more contained drum groove. That transforms into a somber one. Bassist Sebastian Ryderberg gets a nice bass lead with twinkling guitars behind him. As the ringing bass adds to the snare strikes. The great, almost cinematic build near the closing two minutes adds to the anguishing, throat shredding like vocals as the piece wraps up. Especially with the beautifully mixed violins, performed by Emmie Chao & Anna Rodell, closing out the song. “Waiting For A Fire” starts with heavy tom fills, distorted guitar strums and ringing ambient guitars. Blast beats kick in as tremolo guitars ring through the atmospheric, ethereal like space. Shrieking vocals barely pierce through the layers upon layers of distortion and production. The band knows how to fill the space of the mix, creating a huge soundscape. With an almost alternative rock/metal guitar riff with tremolo guitars behind it, it does channel acts like Sunbather-era Deafheaven in it’s performance, especially going into the sudden pace change. Dropping down to a haunting and depleting crawl. Musically, it is a dense track, creating a dark, unrelenting but sorrowful piece. The instrumentation is complex in it’s arrangement, with the band doing a great job of pacing and knowing when to slow down to build emotion, and speeding up to keep the listener’s attention. On “Gravity Eater”, the opening guitar hits that grunge-esque 90’s reverb a la Smashing Pumpkins, soaked in distortion as the drums strike hard behind them. As the vocals are shrieked through the double bass and twinkling, reverb-heavy guitars. The switch-up to a cooldown like breakdown around the quarter mark into the halfway mark, establishes a calm reprieve and a feeling of ease as the guitars build into a drum fill with double bass. The slower tempo change as the drums have more grit and anger in the delivery, coincide with the screams and spoken word sections after the halfway mark. The rest of the song borders on the easy-listening and calming feeling as the song closes out its six-plus minute runtime.
“The Last Glacier” opens with piano, with tinges of a warping effect on them as violins rise from the depths. Tremolo guitars come in like a ton of bricks, with tons of bass and steady drums. The screaming vocals are higher in the mix and also in a higher register, with more grit and heartache in the delivery. Interspersed with piano, spoken word, and reverb/chorus heavy guitars, the song takes on an almost uplifting and positive sound musically. Giving off hope in the performance. Snare strikes near the halfway mark sound almost gunshot-esque, before almost imitating the classic black metal drum tone of the second wave of black metal. The closing minute of the song really bring the song to a scale of grandeur. With chaotic drumming, harsh screaming and anguish, backed by beautiful violins and a somber but somehow uplifting sounding piano. “Earthbound” has a straightforward sounding rock tone and play style in the opening moments. A matching drum section goes along with it as well. Channeling the screamo/metalcore scene that became popular in the early 2000’s. Moments of From Autumn To Ashes, with elements of shoegaze and post metal that you’d get from Red Sparowes. A unique & beautiful combination that works and adapts to the rise of blackgaze in the last couple years. The shortest song on the album, it does show that Together For The Stars can do a lot and hit emotional and musical strides in under 6-7 minutes. The album closes with the album’s title track. With a building, heavily distorted but also clean guitar section, the light drumming helps build to a large scale. Along with the echoing piano, the song does create a soundscape of unimaginable sadness and an unforeseeable and hopeless amalgamation of a melancholic nature. A beautiful construct of a smattering of emotions. Signs of hope and positivity shine during spoken word sections. But then the darkened spiral of the music and screams, bring the listener crashing to the earth. Showing that the future is bleak and no way to crawl out in the music’s unmistakable message. A heavy, closing piece that really wraps up the album in a wounded, war-torn, and emotional state that is recovering and trying to heal from the weight of the journey it just went through.
The Fragile Silence is an album that does deliver a weight of emotions throughout the entire album. With many layers of production and sounds, the album can be a lot to process or digest. Together For The Stars really have studied and truly nailed the genre’s quirks of the dark and unhinged level of screams and anguish, matched by the counter opposite of atmospheric positivity and a scale of hope amongst the darkest depths of the lyrics and the heart wrenching vocals. They are a band to keep an eye on in the genre and to see where they go and where they take their musical journey on future records. A good record for a fan of the blackgaze sound and something to listen to when you want to forget about the world or if you want the world to forget about you.
SCORE: 4 / 5
You can check out the album on the band's Bandcamp page HERE. You can also stream the album on the band's Spotify page HERE.
