adg211288 Across the Darkened Skies (2014) is the debut full-length album by US melodic death metal act Fenris. It was self-released digitally by the band via a name your price scheme which includes being available for free, although physical copies are also available.

Despite the band describing themselves as a melodic folk metal act the music on Across the Darkened Skies has much more to do with melodic death metal to my ears. They do feature some folk elements, but they are used in such an on/off and often vague manner that I don’t feel comfortable using the folk metal term to describe the album. The band also uses a few symphonic elements, notably the introductory title track which is fully symphonic but they do also crop up for odd stabs during the following metal orientated music.

It’s not really a problem that a release sounds different than expected of course, although I did decide to try it because I realised I hadn’t heard much folk metal from 2014 yet so that unfortunately turned out to be a pointless exercise where Across the Darkened Skies is concerned, as I don’t find what folk presence is here to be that satisfactory. It really only feels as if used to flavour their base melodic death sound, only rarely feeling like a defining feature. As a melodic death album though the results of Across the Darkened Skies are passable enough but the band don't manage to wow me and there are only a few instances where the tracks hint that the band might have better in them down the line. The most interesting tracks to my ears are Nazgûl and Blind Gods, the former of which I’m sure most realise features a The Lord of the Rings theme. Blind Gods struck me as the strongest of the band's originals track as it seemed somewhat more aggressive in its delivery, which made it sound more inspired, although decent ideas can also be heard is songs such as Unbound and King of the East.

Complicating things though is the decision the band have made to round Across the Darkened Skies off by covering Blind Guardian’s Valhalla. The song is taken from the album Follow the Blind (1989). As a power metal act with significant speed metal elements at the time Blind Guardian naturally have a different vocal style compared to that of Fenris, who proceed to produce a growled version of the song, which sounds wrong to my ears even though I usually like it when an artist tries to make a cover song their own. Because Blind Guardian are a much stronger act than Fenris have shown themselves on their original material the cover just happens to end up technically being the strongest song on the album. The band’s adding of folk elements to it was actually quite tasteful but it’s also disappointing that those folk elements are the best on the album, so I would have liked to have heard something more along the lines of what it said on the tin from these guys. Much of their own material is made to sound uninspired by comparison.

Like with most acts whose music I did not enjoy too much I can hear that Fenris are an act with potential to do better. It seems that based on their own descriptions of their music though that they want to do folk metal but to do that they’d need to give a greater prominence to folksy instruments or at least melodies than they did on Across the Darkened Skies. What the album turned out as has a few stronger moments, but ultimately I can’t recommend it.