Felled - The Intimate Earth Review

It’s the first time – I guess – I review a Black Metal with this intent. I mean I have read a lot about Black metal bands that have nature and picturesque scenes as subjects, but I’ve never reviewed to an album that covered these. I must admit that I really liked the outcome. You my dear fan may remember that I said many times here that I love musical contrasts and Felled with “The Intimate Earth” deliver a lot of them. The combination of the sound of violins with the eerie and shrieking voice and distorted guitars gives the contrast I really right from the start with “Ember Dream” whose intro may sound a little strange to ears of the newcomer to the black arts. If Black Metal is for few, Folk Black Metal is for even fewer. It’s the kind of combination that some root black metallers really hate. I don’t. I find it far from interesting.

The interesting things about “The Intimate Earth” don’t stop only in the violin, but also in the melodic structure and build up of the songs in order to fit all the ideas Felled desire to pass to the fan. The strummings on “Fire Season on the Outer Rim” are only the appetizer the band prepared to the fan. A closer look will show that the band used some structures that aren’t really common into Metal music. In general, the mood in “The Intimate Earth” is, as the tittle says, intimistic. And as I said before the inspiration Felled go in for their songs is our little and sad and lonely and pathetic little planet and its nature. I find this kind of band a little bit nostalgic. I’ll elaborate. We live in a time that nature is pretty much endangered and many important scientists say that we are away from the turning point, that is, there is no turning back. So, what Felled do is to evoke something that is possible no to be here in a few years. Maybe this “The Intimate Earth” is a kind of portrait to the future. I confess that I find everything in here stunning specially when we listen to the ten-minute trip “Sphagnum in the Hinterlands” a song that maintain the mood with a slow, but strong, cadence and a guitar sound that hypnotizes. By the way, the guitar here in the album has a very important role that transcends the usual. It is responsable for giving the mooding in all tracks.

I guess some experts may label “The Intimate Earth” as post-Black Metal and to be frank it wouldn’t be very far from reality. The fan that listens to the last, but not least, track “The Salt Binding” may have this idea. In a nutshell, what the fan will find here, like it or not, is the avant garde of Extreme Metal music. Did I like it? Yeah, a lot.

Felled “The Intimate Earth” will be released on July 2nd via Transcending Obscurity Records.

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