FEN
Dust And Dr ea m s
FEN ARE ONE OF THE BRIGHTEST IN THE UK’S BLACK METAL SCENE AND THEIR LATEST ALBUM, ENTITLED DUSTWALKER, IS SLATED FOR A JANUARY RELEASE. JODI MULLEN TOOK THE OPPORTUNITY TO HAVE A FRIENDLY TÊTE-ÀTÊTE WITH A MYSTERIOUS GENT CALLED THE WATCHER. THEY TALKED ABOUT THE NEW ALBUM, WORKING WITH CODE666, MEMBER CHANGES AND BEING COMPARED TO LUMINARIES LIKE PRIMORDIAL AND ENSLAVED. Words: JODI MULLEN
Your new record Dustwalker is due for release in January 2013. How are you feeling about it after finishing recording? A sense of relief, really. One always forgets what a lengthy, draining process recording a full-length can be and if you’re serious about what you’re doing, you can end up investing an enormous amount of time, energy and essence into an album. Given that it was completed a couple of months ago, I’ve managed to get some distance from it and can listen with fresher, more objective ears. With this in mind, I’m very satisfied with the outcome. As with the previous record, we had an idea in mind as to how we wanted this to sound and where wanted to go with it and I feel we have achieved that. The band has changed a lot in the last 18 months or so and Dustwalker encapsulates this vividly. Do you think the record differs from your last release, Epoch? Yes. The melodic/atmospheric elements that define the Fen sound are still very present on this record but Dustwalker presents a
starker, harder sonic palette. The intention with this record was for each song to stand on its own, to have a defined and specific ‘feel’. Epoch perhaps was guilty of flowing together like one long 60-minute song which worked perfectly for the atmosphere/concept we were conveying with that record but Dustwalker speaks of more fractured themes and thus it was necessary to approach the songwriting and realisation in a different way. Is there any overall underlying theme to the new album? There is, though perhaps in a more loose sense than there was on Epoch. Dustwalker is a more disparate album and deals with concepts of isolation, disassociation and a forceful sense of detachment. It deals with the perspectives of an individual divorced from the reality that surrounds them, unable to engage with a material reality that holds little or no meaning for them. As with many of our lyrical subjects, there is the overt and metaphorical use of landscape in delivering this message. Your music combines post-rock and black metal, leading to very delicate and atmospheric tracks like the intro to
Hands of Dust. How do you balance these two different aspects of your sound? I think contrast and dynamics is a hugely important part of any music and this is where we feel this comes into play most prominently. Of course, it is entirely possible to completely overdo the ‘quiet-loud-quiet’ approach or bludgeon the crescendo to death. For us, it is a question of moderation, of that intrinsic sense of ‘rightness’ that comes when you have struck the right balance with your arrangements. Indeed, on the subject of balancing distorted/extreme sections with cleaner/slower pieces, there is also the matter of texture. Delivering the right atmosphere with distorted sections has more to do with the cadence of the riff and the melody lines you are playing whereas there is much more room to experiment with soundscapes, guitar effects and space with cleaner passages. I personally am much more interested in the possibilities of clean guitar sounds at the moment—it’s a wider sonic palette for a start, you are not tied down by high-gain and compression—and it is something I am going to continue to explore.
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