reax music magazine :: music + culture » Reviews » Star of Ash - The Thread

It would be something of a stretch to call The Thread a metal album, but it’s equally difficult to deny the metallic influences at play. As the wife of former Emperor guitarist Ihsahn, Norwegian keyboardist/vocalist Heidi S. Tveitan undoubtedly hears more than a little bit of heaviness around the house. But the blackness she pursues as Star of Ash is of a decidedly more atmospheric and decidedly less brutal type. The Thread is the second album Tveitan has released as Star of Ash, and the project flows quite nicely from the ambient experimentalism she pursued in tandem with her spouse in Peccatum. Here, though, things are comparatively more song-based, and with Tveitan singing lyrics provided by out-there Japanese author Kenji Siratori, the entire album takes on an artful, introspective flavor. Brooding and expansive, The Thread evokes the afterglow of black metal’s horror, with a post-apocalyptic frailty that eschews song-based compositions in favor of sweeping, cinematic motifs defined by Tveitan’s keyboard playing. - Jason Ferguson