Fen - Epoch
Not exactly sure what to make of this new Fen album. My first brush with the UK gloomsters came in 2009 with the nearly flawless Malediction Fields record. I was so smitten by their brand of Agalloch worship, I backtracked and hunted down 2007’s Ancient Sorrow EP, a decent release but a little on the boring side. Perhaps that would be the best way to describe Epoch? Maybe it’s one of those albums you have to lock yourself in a room with for a year, but I’ve been listening to this non-stop for about a week now and absolutely nothing sticks, save for the haunting “Half-Light Eternal,” which powerfully showcases the lighter, more mellow side of Fen. It might just be the right direction for them to go in. The clean vocals are more than good enough. The Black Metal vocals, again very similar to Agalloch, work very well, but some of the extreme vocal experimentation on Epoch does not do the music justice. And these songs feel LONG! Lengthy tracks are nothing new to these guys, but The Malediction Fields material of equal length did not feel quite this long. I don’t know if it is the somewhat less-than-stunning production (that also plagues the new Agalloch, while I’m at it) that makes this so hard to digest, but there is something missing that was just there two years ago.
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