Customer Reviews

The Malediction Fields

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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.

This is one of the best new metal bands I discovered in 2010. They play a very distinct, dark atmospheric black metal. Some may say folk metal but it doesn't really scream "folk" to me at all despite the calm/acoustic parts. The songs are quite long (7 songs clocking in at just under an hour) and contain both black-metal style harsh vocals and clean vocals. There's an abundant amount of clean sections but I'd say the backbone of the album is still somewhat traditional black metal - distorted and quite fast - just enshrouded with a thick, somber haze by the faint keyboards and synths (in a completely non-corny way, of course).

When I first heard some of these songs, particularly "Lashed by Storm," I almost thought it was John Haughm of Agalloch singing on the track. Admittedly, since I'm such a John Haughm fanboy, I started looking into them to see if it was actually him on vocals or not and that spawned my interest in the band. At first, I thought they were totally Agalloch clones but the more I listened I realized that I think they just have similar voices, the music isn't really that similar to Agalloch although it would most likely appeal to Agalloch fans.

I haven't been able to find their EP yet, but so far, I do think this album is better then their next effort, "Epoch" although it is a very close second.

It is said that they are inspired by an area in England called The Fens, which contain many mysterious landscapes, most notably marshes and well, fens, and I think this translates into the music very well.

Fans of atmospheric metal such as Agalloch, Alcest, Katatonia, Summoning, Apotheosis, etc. should check them out as soon as possible.

Fen is amazing! I really got into them with the album "Epoch" and was blown away! It is by far one of the best albums of that I have heard in the last few years. I got "Malediction Fields" not long after and I have not been let down! They are hauntingly beautiful and have the perfect combination of black metal and atmosphere. They are brilliant and these songs will stay with you long after turned off your stereo.