Album Review: Forlorn - Aether
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
If I’m being honest this is an album I’ve been looking forward to seeing the light of day since I saw the band at the 2023 Radar Festival, and again at last years Uprising. There’s just something I find rather spellbinding about Forlorn’s music that seems to defy a clear explanation.
At just thirty-minutes and eight tracks, Aether is shorn of any fat and hits in all the right places; even the three short interludes add to the overall aesthetic of the album and, without them, Aether would feel almost bereft of one of its constituent parts.
Mother of Moon is one such passage and opens the record with a heap of atmospherics, as though preparing the listener for what is to come. Tribal drums and chanting accompany the listener as you are drawn through a swirling vortex, back to a timeless age.
What you find awaiting you is Creatress, whose delicate strains hold melody and a pastoral, gothic sense. However, such idyll cannot last and the seductive, almost demonic, voice becomes a fearsome rasp and James Tunstall’s fat bass make its first of many appearances across the record. Blast beats become bombastic and symphonic at the mid-point, elevating the whole thing to grandiose proportions.
The nature – if you’ll pardon the pun – of Aether is to find balance between the competing elements of the world around us and you can hear this in the way James’ bass and his rhythm partner, drummer Jay Swinstead’s, foundational work on anchoring Aether in place, is in sharp contrast to the airy and ethereal guitar flights of fancy from Edd Kerton and Eathan White-Aldworth.
The Wailing’s edgy and angular riff comes close to adopting a Nu metal vibe; Keeper of the Well nears an Industrial sound through its mid-section, while becoming more morose and timeless for the concluding Spirit.
The whole aesthetic of Forlorn and of Aether is one of pagan folk horror and the pastoral element of earth, air, fire and water are the four pillars of the album. Represented by the tracks Spirit, The Wailing, Funeral Pyre and Keeper in the Well respectively, Aether delivers a sense of longing for a more rustic existence, devoid of the hurly-burly of modern life.
But this ain’t no faery-tale; there’s no “happy ever after” at the close of Spirit. For nature is red in tooth and claw and cares little for the affairs of men. Funeral Pyre is Aether’s burning section and acts like a transformation through divination. Taking the idea of sacrifice and juxtaposing placid guitar with some of the album’s heaviest moments, this song seems to be an eternal battle between the forces of Earth and Air, with James and Jay on one side and Edd and Eathan on the other.
Yet, what’s a folk horror without its Willow McGregor or Angel Blake? And this role is ably played by vocalist Megan Elliot whose performance across Aether is both soothing and terrifying. She embodies both Gaia and the Succubus, switching from clean vocals to growls at the drop of a hat.
On Creatress hers is a demonic presence, rasping and guttural, but also enticing and captivating. Megan is Aether’s siren and her song is the wind: sometimes a gentle breeze, other a howling hurricane. Her cleans have an aura of Julie Christmas, especially on The Wailing, while her growls are more in keeping with Arch Enemy.
I specifically didn’t want to make a thing of Forlorn being female-fronted as, in 2025, it is moot point: no one should care about anything other than whether you’re good enough at what you’re doing. Forlorn align with the likes of Svabard, Venom Prison, Employed to Serve, et al not because they are fronted by females, but because they are some of the brightest lights emerging from the British extreme music scene today.
Check out Cat’s piece on the development of woman in heavy music put out for International Women’s Day; and know that Cat herself was shattering glass ceilings back in the Eighties by getting stuck into what were wholly male spaces at that time. She still does to this very day (much to the embarrassment of her kids).
Aether is the album I was expecting/ hoping for from Forlorn and with Church Road Records fighting their corner, the future looks bright for another UK success.
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