Review Summary: A world of music, noise reaffirmed; aural landscapes personified. Fawn Limbs are one of the world’s more interesting metalcore acts.
A few years ago you would probably have me on record for stating something like “metalcore is dead”, citing the usual mainstream tendencies to recycle the same self-serving, mind numbing deviations of brands better suited to large scale festival settings and copy/paste musical ideas. I’ll be the first to admit that because of these ideas I didn’t really explore those acts that experimented on the sounds, taking a few core ingredients and shaping them with a dexterity mostly unknown to those mainstream climes. Enter acts like Fawn Limbs, Rolo Tomassi and Noise Trail Immersion whose albums have paved a way for some ‘alternate’ thinking within the genre. In fact, these bands pushed on the envelope until it broke, paving the way for hosts of other groups to take a sound, push it, mold it and make it their own.
Which brings us to this year’s
Darwin Falls, a veritable whirlwind of wailing guitars and screamed walls of distortion that wrap around the psyche of a listener lost on a journey to
fuck knows where. The noise-driven, mathy aesthetic which drives Fawn Limbs’ larger musical motif has recently become a focal point for a reviewer still yearning for something ‘different’ out of
that metalcore scene... and while
Darwin Falls is distinctly different from what the mainstream usually offers, this reviewer couldn’t find himself anymore at home.
Spoken word introduces “Nesting Lumens”, a six minute introductory into another black/grey artwork of sorts. Much like the art that adorns the cover, there’s a dichotomy of sorts that identifies with the harshness and the overall dissonance that is transformed by the track’s lighter, contrasting moments. Instead of holding their cards close to the chest, Fawn Limbs step boldly, unleashing their formula early on and
Darwin Falls’ portrait is awash with math rock, post, grind and a somewhat blackened sludge. “Wound Hiss” plays on some initial melancholia, gradually lifting on a foreboding atmosphere while providing yet more spoken word. It’s eerie, and even paced as Fawn Limbs progresses without haste, but the ground to which this track stands quickly shifts; dystopian cries cutting through the dim. Cold aggression on a sparse, minimalistic battlefield. The spoken word itself is far from silky, instead a beacon of bluntness and careful gruff tones accent the quieter, meandering moments—standing away from the typical juxtaposition of obvious light and dark or yin and yang. When Fawn Limbs does kick into gear, it’s deliberate, almost forced; akin to being that artwork that’s deliberately roughed up around the edges—
just to make a point.
“Caesura” continues the record’s more cinematic themes. The spoken word, gravelly and paced, continues its presence within the Fawn Limbs framework and by now the listener should expect no less. For
Darwin Falls is stylistically unsettling and it’s latter half only picks up steam from where its humble beginnings hinted, but there’s always a new dimension to be explored. Take the horns that punch through “Twitching, Lapsing” unprovoked by the cacophony of blasting and grinding beats, like a musician playing the sax in the background at completely the wrong time, and yet it
belongs as if that mess of sounds was begging, just
fucking begging for a resilient brass line to punch through a world of molten blacks and grey.
Even as I resign myself to the fact that conventional metalcore will continue to solidify my thoughts on the genre as a whole, I’m grateful that there’s still a handful of acts willing to push right up against the box of what’s possible...even if that includes Frankensteining a few extra components into their make up. Likely, we should be calling this innovation rather than the usual disclaimer that something equals something else heavy metal.
Darwin Falls itself is a monster of an album, carried by the cinematic approach that defines almost every track. Is it completely new, innovative? Yeah, no. Is it interesting, out of the ordinary? Well we already know the answer. Fawn Limbs continue to impress, continue to create interest. Let’s hope they continue on their trajectory.
