been a while since i've done one of these but y'all: forestella is nuts. consider their cover of imagine dragons' radioactive, which, i know, but please trust that this is the most overqualified cover of radioactive you've ever seen. for a similar vibe, try their cover of shape of you, where at the 1:47 mark they layer a spanish cover on top of the english and THEN, apparently not content with this, they layer another verse on top of both of those in ZULU at 3:03. or check out the cover of scarborough fair, which is a very me thing to highlight but is also genuinely one of the most stunning things i've ever seen.
but if i'm sharing forestella for an audience i do want to take a chance to highlight their original stuff in the embed, and so i give you: utopia, a track my friend @mercutioes describes as a "self-contained gothic pop opera." it is also a sci fi/cyberpunk story, i think? a lot is going on here; any summary i give will leave something out. you have got to watch this thing.
check them out and don't let temptation bring you down!
i haven't posted something for this in a while. but first check out that forestella track, it's pretty wild.
anyway. keep of kalessin from norway just put out a new full-length album a little bit ago after eight years. they describe themselves as an "epic extreme metal band", and yeah, that's about right. they're still a three-piece lineup, with guitarist obsidian c handling vocals. this album was actually premiered live on the 2023 70000 tons of metal cruise, which is something i might have appreciated but probably not enough to actually pay money for it. really don't like cruises.
anyway here's the album! i listened to it once earlier and it's pretty good although it'll need a couple more spins for me to solidify how i feel about it.
