Fen - The Malediction Fields (2009)

When this album starts, I started saying to my self” “here comes another shitty atmospheric black metal band”, like I often find telling my self and being completely right. Well for Fen I ate my own words, while their style is indeed atmospheric black/dark metal they have carefully crafted elements of folk and post-rock, to create a great unique sound.

I would say they kind of resemble Alcest or even Agalloch at some points, but they have their own original ideas and sound embedded in their music.

This album also evokes some memories of Ulver’s opus: Bergtatt. While at some points the music is very harsh, it’s perfectly balanced by great acoustic interludes changing the pace entirely of the songs.

I’m very impressed by this bands ability to fuse ambient/ post-rock with some harsh black metal, and a way that actually sounds good and you can listen and enjoy for a long period of time. The more I listen to this album songs the more I discover little details that I did not noticed the left before like subtle bass guitar melodies, or perfectly layered of keyboard arrangements with slow drumming.

I found my self playing this album over and over since it was so good. I’m not going to say this is ‘true’ black metal or anything like it, but it’s well executed and produced incarnation of a whole different music genre that is atmospheric black/dark metal, with the most representative bands of the genre being: Alcest, Agalloch and also Fen.

Country: England