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| | Malediction Fields | | | Music Artist : | | Fen | | Music Style : | | General | | Record Label : | | 101 DISTRIBUTION | | Release Date : | | 2009-03-10 | | Store Price : | | $87.98 | | Artistopia's Price: $87.98 | | Usually ships in 24 hours | | |
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CD Tracks/Songs
Disc 11. Exile's Journey
2. A Witness To The Passing Of Aeons
3. Beneath The Waves
4. As Buried Spirits Stir
5. The Warren
6. Lashed By Storm
7. Bereft
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Other Artist Albums
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Customer Reviews of This Album/CD |
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 Amazing atmospheric folk/black metal; probably Fen's best work
Submitted on: 2009-10-27 |
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I'm honored to write the first review for this excellent album by Fen. Fen are a British atmospheric folk/black metal group and are probably one of the most underrated acts in this genre. Note my qualifications to 'black metal'. The music is not all blastbeats and screams; there's plenty of folky leads/tunes, slow-ish parts, and synths that give the music a very atmospheric feel. I've listened to the album many times over already, and it only gets better with age; I would consider this is my favorite release of 2009 in this genre.
For readers familiar with Fen's earlier work, I am happy to say that this album is much better produced: the drums blend in better than on Ancient Sorrow, and the 'raw' black metal feel is mostly gone, which, in my opinion, is good for atmospheric BM. For newcomers to Fen: start with this album and work your way backwards, because this may very well be Fen's best work to date.
The songs on this album defy classification into one genre. How do you classify an album that has passages that have multiple acoustic guitars going at it, post-rockish build-ups, nylon string solos over tremolo riffage, chanting, screaming, folky leads, synths, etc? Most songs have multiple sections and tempo changes, and haunting clean vocals in addition to the BM screams. Unlike most black metal, the bassline is very audible, and the blastbeats are less in-your-face. No single track stands out because all of them are equally good, and most of them are over 7 minutes. I would particularly recommend taking 20 minutes off your day and listening to 'As Buried Spirits Stir' (watch for the acoustic guitar solo) and 'Bereft' (bass solo!) online to get some idea of Fen's music --- the whole thing is on Last.fm and probably Youtube as well.
I cannot recommend this album enough to fans of Agalloch, Wolves in the Throne Room, Summoning, Drudkh, or any of the other folky BM bands. Even people who are not fond of black metal should give this a listen. The nearly-1-hour MP3 album is an absolute steal at less than $7, so please do yourself a favor and buy this (do not pirate!) as soon as you can. |
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