Review Summary: A different kind of Fen album, but another excellent one
I’ve always admired Fen’s unabashed commitment to routinely releasing sprawling albums to the listening public, typically running well over an hour and chock full of ten to fifteen minute tracks. While black metal and post rock aren’t typically known for their sense of brevity, even by the standards of those genres, this band has always aimed for the grandest of compositions. And when you go that grand, you better deliver. At their best, Fen undeniably have, with works like
Carrion Skies and
Winter standing among the crowning achievements of a particular scene, and leaving the band as stalwarts of the English metal landscape.
In some sense, then,
Monuments to Absence is nothing new - even if none of the eight tracks here quite hit the ten minute mark, Fen’s seventh album is still an hour-plus behemoth. But this one nonetheless feels different - even the most cursory listen reveals a ferocity which hasn’t been the dominant stream in more atmospheric recent efforts like 2019’s
The Dead Light or 2017’s masterwork
Winter. The band themselves regard the record to be “an expression of anger, hopelessness, and despair”. It’s not expressly stated what exactly has made the group’s collective mood so bleak, but look around, there’s plenty of fodder for disillusionment to be found. Whatever the impetus, those emotions feel very real here, and they’ve been channeled into the productive use of making a powerful extreme metal record.
This stylistic shift is evident from the tracklist’s beginning - opener “Scouring Ignorance” is thoroughly visceral and militant throughout its (relatively brief) runtime. The title track, which follows, feels less full-throated but similarly aggressive, mounting a steady and inexorable attack on the senses. Fundamentally, all of the eight songs represented on
Monuments to Absence feature Fen at the heavier side of their typical sound - even if there are softer moments. Among the latter, the most notable might be the prog-era Enslaved echoes of “Truth Is Futility”, which incorporates clean vox, or the lengthy and well-crafted post rock-ian intro of “All Is Lost”. As a whole, though, this is a cut-and-dry black metal album, whereas the band’s other later-era works were notable works of genre fusion.
Therefore, judging by the standards of an unrepentant and comparatively straightforward black metal record,
Monuments to Absence is an excellent one. There are no songs less than great, and the flow from track-to-track is near-immaculate (in particular, the mid-album stretch of “To Silence And Abyss We Reach” and “Truth Is Futility” is a wonderful pairing). On the other hand, though, the nagging complaint in the back of my mind is that this release doesn’t quite represent Fen at their best. What the band truly excels at, after all, is the melding of black metal and post rock - a far from unique combination, sure, but also a specialty few other artists do better. With their latest album, Fen is inhabiting different territory, and while the product is superior to most of the competition, it feels a touch less distinctive, less obviously Fen. Part of this gripe might just be a reflection on the incredible closer “All Is Lost”, which once again sees Fen expertly wielding the duality of heavy and soft, and thereby demonstrates precisely what is lacking throughout the rest of this record. So, the prime takeaway - Fen have once again delivered the goods, with their heaviest album in a while. It’s excellent and stands apart from their recent vintage, but also might not be the best formula for maximizing their potential moving forward.
