With all that is constantly going on within the undeniably dense underground of black metal, A Diadem of Dead Stars has long been a name that I’ve kept a close eye on since I first discovered the name with “The Mist Bearer pt.II” eight years ago, and I’ve done my best to be very patient with this act. It’s been a long wait since the band’s last full-length album with only an EP and a pair of singles coming to the surface in the seven years since then with the news of a new effort from A Diadem of Dead Stars always something that I hope for with every new year. 2023 currently isn’t going to bring us any fresh material with this current release, but it’s in the act of a collective retrospection that I think this compilation has more to offer us than the mere convenience of having the last seven year’s worth of material in one spot.

As much as I would like to sit here and talk about how much I wish that this was brand new material from A Diadem of Dead Stars rather than a compilation, I can’t sit here and pretend as though the very existence of “Emerald Sunsets” isn’t just what I needed to not just re-introduce myself a little bit to the act as I wait for actual new material as well as a tremendous opportunity to really take into account the journey of this band up to now. You can draw a clear line of thought from the earliest material in question here, “…Of Green Pastures…”, to what was originally featured in the 2021 EP, “The Furrow of Woes”, to not just track the progression of the very mindset of A Diadem of Dead Stars with the kind of black metal at work here to also show us how adept the one-man act has become at blending flowing, atmospheric black metal with the more ambient roots of the band’s sound. It’s such that all four tracks featured here offer a new perspective for us as to what the band is capable of with it being far more than a bunch of lo-fi howls or a dungeon synth act masquerading as black metal thanks to a handful of attempts at some frosty riffs. Rather, it’s evident that A Diadem of Dead Stars is not still in its silence as you can feel the craftsmanship over time being honed and refined in such a manner that this name still has the potential to be a name that demands to be respected if given the chance.

We already saw several glimpses of that with 2016’s “Kingdoms Bathed in Golden Light” with that aforementioned EP giving us a brief but bountiful glimpse as to what this act has to offer us, and I can’t help but feel in my very bones that A Diadem of Dead Stars is poised to really shock us if the stars align properly. We can only wait and hope that it won’t be a lengthy silence again, but it’s until then that “Emerald Sunsets” has more than enough to offer than what it might initially seem.

“Emerald Sunsets” releases on February 3rd via III Damnation!

LISTEN to A Diadem of Dead Stars on Bandcamp here.

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