FEN : THE MALEDICTION FIELDS
Code 666
Building impressively upon the groundwork of 2007’s EP “Ancient Sorrow”, Fen’s debut full-length “The Malediction Fields” allows this incredibly atmospheric and intense band’s sound to take full wing and soar. The scope achieved on this release is massive, proving that the band can combine harsh, howling black metal sounds with heavily nature-influenced tone and inventive progressive movements to great effect, without losing any of their central rawness, but at the same time reaching dizzyingly beautiful heights.
The quality is evident right away, in the form of opener “Exile’s Journey”, wherein clean, deep, bassy poolings of sound advance into an intense, murky black metal sound, which eventually recedes and matures, with strong synth tones underscoring its impact and adding to the crush. Much of the track has a driving and forceful nature, with blasts and The Watcher’s distinctively harsh rasp maintaining the extreme approach, but there are also plenty of moments of reflection in the form of clean, warm breaks, reminiscent of the big British doom-death bands, and passages where the soaring atmosphere is allowed to dominate, creating a feeling akin to walking into the clearing of an ancient forest and being confronted with a dramatic and sublime sky.
The control, vision and incredibly song-structuring talents displayed on this track remain remarkable throughout. Stand-out tracks include the astral and epic “A Witness to the Passing of Aeons”, the echoing, slow-burning and fabulously evolved “The Warren”, with its gorgeous climax, and “As Buried Spirits Stir”, which has a certain catchiness to the faster guitar sections, and contains a beautiful bass break which really enables the track as a whole to breathe. Bassist Grungyn contributes clean lead vocals to “Colossal Voids”, which are quite tentative and unpolished, but add to the clever variety of moods played out across the album.
Most critics seem to have plumped with obvious French comparisons, such as Agalloch and Alcest, and indeed Fen have a similar ability to summon swathes of melancholic European forest, and a similar flavour to their emotive power. A Nordic reference won’t go amiss either; there’s something of Ulver to this record, but it also reminds me of Pantheon I’s 2007 album, in the intensity and boldness of its layers, and its looser percussive approach. Fen’s ‘post-rock’ progressive sensibilities mean that however many other bands tread parallel paths, they capture something genuinely creative within every song. A masterpiece of tone, feeling and song-writing, I can’t recommend this one enough for all fans of the extreme.
92/100
