FEN — Towards the Shores of the End (review)

FEN — Towards the Shores of the End album cover Split · 2011 · Atmospheric Black Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Vehemency
It hasn’t been but a couple of weeks when Fen’s second full-length Epoch was in my hearing and now it’s already time to get exposed to some more of this group’s atmospheric blending of black metal and post-rock - and I don’t complain! The other side of Towards the Shores of the End consists of De Arma, a new project of A’s, better known from Armagedda and Lönndom.

The four tracks provided by Fen deliver pretty much nothing surprising for those who are familiar with the band already: a heavy dose of melancholy and natural sound, combining the harshness of black metal and the fragile sound and song progressions of post-rock. Fen might be slightly more in-your-face on the split than on any previous recording of theirs: the war rhythms in the beginning of ”Ageless Thenody” sound for a while like a different band until the melodies kick in and ”Soilbound” has tendencies to a more chugging(-kind-of) sections. The title track builds up slowly from the beginning where only bass guitar, toms and kick drums follow a certain pattern. A lush acoustic instrumental of ”Bereft”, deriving from the debut album, is added to the package as well, and what a sweet piece of acoustic guitars, piano and minimal percussion it is.

De Arma offers a more traditional take on mesmerizing lo-fi black metal, and the three tracks could be divided into two categories: ”Crimson Waters Ebbing the Shores” and ”From Horizon to Oblivion” are clearly rooted in the sound of Armagedda where the mostly tremolo-picked riffs have a somewhat evilish tendency, not to forget the similar reverberating guitar tone, and the Lönndom esque odd clean vocals. The 9-minute centerpiece ”Noemata”, on the other hand, could pretty much be a Fen track because the sound is extremely similar, from the vocals to the melodies and overall atmosphere. Due to its identical sound in comparison to Fen, I find the track the least impressive of the whole bunch though it’s still pretty well done, no question of that.

Towards the Shores of the End presents two great bands of which the other has already received truly deserved recognition, and of which the other is still a new name that will hopefully continue in the vein of the two more original songs in the future. Definitely a recommendable purchase for any Fen lover and for fans of A’s other projects, now that Armagedda has been buried for a long while already.
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