I get the feeling this third album from post-black metal band Fen, “Dustwalker”, is meant to be intensely moody and bleak. Now I’m not saying it’s devoid of atmosphere, but to me it’s more melancholic with some anger thrown in at parts. In fact many passages are very light and draw heavily on alt-rock while there is also a strong folk influence.
It will be asserted by many that the way Fen use different sounds and styles means they have come up with something new and are pushing the boundaries of black metal along with the UK black metal scene (you will especially hear this from UK writers). Yet there are bands like Spain’s Obsidian Kingdom who have been merging these styles and more for longer than Fen, and with more interesting, diverse and experimental results. But if you want to see who’s really pushing the boundaries of black metal, you need to look to the likes of Helen Money aka Alison Cheney.
I don’t want to sound too critical of the record – it is good – it’s just that I’m uncertain exactly what it wants to be. It’s more post- and alt-rock than black-metal, but putting that aside it’s the emotion and the journey that I find hard to relate to. I like many of the songs individually – ‘Spectre’ and ‘The Black Sound’ are particularly good, and there are great melodies throughout the album. The mix brings out the different instruments and vocals at just the right levels as they take turns to grab the melody but at the same time manage to keep it raw and dirty which suits the songs very well.
On the other hand there are things I don’t like such as the short passage of harmonised clean vocals in ‘Walking the Crowpath’. In fact the clean vocals throughout are rather insipid in that way only the British know how. This album does shift but only between three general sounds/styles and these shifts are unsubtle, overused and by the last couple of songs things do start to sound the same.
“Dustwalker” is a good record, but I didn’t find it to be a great record.
“Dustwalker”is out now.
Fen facebook page.
