Fen
Epoch

LA RECENSIONE

The light of the fire danced on the rocky wall that bordered the clearing, while on the other side, beyond the plain, a cliff ran straight towards the sea. The hunters were almost in a trance, running, screaming, exalting themselves and, with spears in hand rising and falling rhythmically, almost as if wanting to pierce the smoke, they sang incomprehensible songs, primitive in the ferocity with which they were recited but childish in the words they contained. From afar, the young blond boy watched them, not joining their festivities, knowing they were just the beginning of the end, the triumph of destruction "Of Wilderness And Ruin." Beside him was his loyal companion, that chubby four-eyed fellow who, with his nagging voice, had often dispensed unsolicited advice, but (he would never openly admit it out of pride) they were the only remaining link to the civilization that seemed to have forgotten them.

And finally, the timid isolated Prophet, in whose distorted visions tainted by an unconfessed epilepsy, he foresaw what was the end of everything, the triumph of chaos, a blind rage capable of ensnaring the world, plunging it into an eternal twilight from which only madness would emerge.

Fury, a sense of detached rational control and a pronounced and disenchanted creativity (almost on the verge of madness) hover like morning mist over English meadows. From this mist, from which so many post black metal bands have emerged all alike, Fen draws vital energy, and with a leap they had not been able to make before, gift us with a finally creative, different, fascinating, mystical, and captivating work.

Not yet able to compete with the American scene of the likes of Wolves In The Throne Room and Agalloch (though there are few steps left to climb), "Epoch" is like a cold, dry, and biting chill that enters your bones and falls asleep there, remaining in dormancy only to occasionally reemerge with sharp lashes that make you understand it has now become part of you.