Hailing from UK, FEN reveal the first glimpse into their forthcoming offering, “Elemental Part One: Mourning Earth”, to be released on August 21st via Prophecy Productions.
Pre-orders are now active here: https://spkr.store/collections/fen .
FEN are climbing to a new artistic height by coming down to earth with their eighth full-length “Elemental Part One: Mourning Earth”. The East Anglian trio has turned to their ‘roots’ in every sense, by distilling the true essence of what constitutes their sound through everything that they have learned and added in the last two decades. While the previous album, “Monuments to Absence” (2023), was deliberately arranged dense, fast and intense, FEN decided to leave breathing space on this album to allow more time for themes and ideas to exhale and unfurl. Of course, there is still much sonic aggression but channelled differently as large parts of “Mourning Earth” were recorded live to allow an organic nature to flow, and to permit the natural rhythms of the pieces to develop. Lyrically, FEN sum up their basic idea behind “Elemental Part One: Mourning Earth” in their own poetic words: “The morning mists clearing over the boggy expanses of the fens to reveal another grey, gloom-laden day of sorrow and regret. And at twilight, the slow, sad realisation that tomorrow promises only more of the same – tormented by the half-heard whispers of the spirits bound to the soils, our pain continues. And we can only endure.” With “Elemental Part One: Mourning Earth”, FEN have reached a new pinnacle in their exciting career and achieved a perfect balance between their black metal foundations and post-black metal innovations. FEN take their listener on a journey to grim bogs, languid waterways, and dismal fogs over bare rock – yet on the other side waits a sense of surcease to the endless existential ennui within.
Tracklist:
1. Glacier
2. Tectonic
3. Massif
4. Abyssal Plain
5. Barrow
6. Moor
Bonus tracks (artbook only):
1. The Torture Never Stops (WASP cover)
2. Limbs of Aether
3. The Ghost Elms
4. The Same Deep Water as You (Cure cover)
5. Wooden Ships (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
Listen to the song “Tectonic” below
“While our minds prefer to imagine that we stand on solid ground, in truth a churning maelstrom of molten metal and rock rotates below our earth’s crust – just as our emotions hide beneath the skin. FEN are unleashing this primordial force in ‘Tectonic’ “, Mastermind Frank “The Watcher” Allain writes. “With ‘Tectonic’ we seek to explore this foundational ebb and flow, a brutal pulse that with one mere twitch, can wreak destruction upon the fragile leavings of our civilisation. And so does our inner self – a primordial, malformed kernel that lurks within, yearning to manifest as something with meaning, something with purpose. To know this can never happen – that true meaning and purpose will forever elude us – is a fundamental source of dissonance, bursting forth in volcanic rage and existential despair. This piece is one of the more direct songs within ‘Mourning Earth’; pulsing and surging with strident anger, heaving riffs and moments of pure, wordless anguish.”
Ancient flame, quietly burning through the shadows. Devoted to black metal and the Dark Arts since the late 90’s. https://linktr.ee/paulafazlich
