Forest Stream’s Somn on Songwriting and Storytelling

forest stream somn live

By Laura Wiebe Taylor

I asked Forest Stream if they consider their music to be driven more by emotion, storytelling, visual imagery, social interactions, or something else altogether. Somn replied:

Well in my case emotions are tightly bound to the social interactions or I’d say even int-erections. That would fit better to describe my recent acts of bravery. Unbelievably well does the storytelling. For instance…

The animals were roaring, trembling:
They’ve got a message from FS!
“They wanna play at our assembly,
The open Air!- said Cur,- yes-yes!”

The Boar exploded “Holy mire!
I won’t allow! That’s our crib!
They aren’t monsters as required!”
And humpy gator lit the squib

And shrieked the siwootch and the klody
“We won’t allow them to our woods!”
“Our neighbors with us!” yelled somebody
And raised their ears above the hoods

As womby wopah booped the boom
Thick ashes painted day in dark
And gloating laugh ripped up the gloom
Where horned ones in the Stump got stuck…

Well, our music is driven by anything, but environmental social surgery always carves it into a form with strokes of sadness and even misery. Here and there I feel these links to the surrounding world, I am influenced by it. And again… there is a funeral shroud of war lying upon us. Seriously speaking, the main influence is the misery we are filled with and submerged into nowadays. And also when I don’t know where to take the power to bear everything, I start singing and listening, and songs become my pulling force, taking me out of this stinking swamp.

Sean is the founder/publisher of Hellbound.ca; he has also written about metal for Exclaim!, Metal Maniacs, Roadburn, Unrestrained! and Vice.