Felled - The Intimate Earth (2021)^{Release ID: 29810}

The debut from US quartet, Felled contains five songs of earthy black metal with a crude level of neo-folk layered over the top.  Having heard two of the band on a radio interview recently it was clear their focus is on nature and the very earth on which we walk, with this theme being a key driver behind their song writing.  Taking the atmospheric folk of Agalloch and then combining this with the more harsh aspects of Panopticon, The Intimate Earth has a real sense of presence.  Haunting and ethereal though this presence maybe, it is so clearly rooted in a consistent theme that it sounds really well connected to the more hoarse black metal riffs.

The folk elements here are largely defined by the violin and viola of Tiffany Holliday with clean (as well as harsh vocals) also being deployed to good affect from a cross section of the four-piece with husband and wife pairing Cavan Wagner and Jenn Grunigen sharing responsibility as well as doing guitar and drums respectively.  The mournful melancholy of the two instruments used by Holliday act as some mist over proceedings; even when in full flow you can hear the stabs of her strings or the undulating whine of them over the more up-tempo passages.  They combine well overall in the mix and are not allowed to drown out anything else.  The only criticism I have of them is that they almost feel obligatory to the songs at times and almost at odds with the guitar on occasion.  Thankfully, such occurrences are rare, however after numerous listens through I am still finding these minimally distracting from my overall entertainment.

The Cascadian style of black metal is something that I am getting more accustomed in recent years and the band clearly have a good understanding of the sub-genre and it is very easy to replicate those mountainous landscapes in your head whilst listening to this record.  Jenn and Cavan had been working on material for a number of years before changing the band name to Felled.  For the bulk of their time as a duo (Moss of Moonlight) they sang about Cascadia becoming an autonomous bioregion and country in its own right .  Fire Season on the Outer Rim is a great track that is full of such auditory imagery and is constructed superbly with a calming interlude in the middle of the song to give this true sense of peace.  The clean vocals do not always fit brilliantly I find though and they do sound a little too monotonous at times.  It is hard to balance clean vocals with such a strong black metal influence present and this is only their debut release of course so some slack can be cut here.

Bassist Isamu Sato needs no introduction really having been in the ranks of Yob previously.  His performance here is urgent yet attentive and it works really well with the equally intense and alert drumming of Jenn.  Whilst there are some improvements to be made, Felled do sound like a cohesive unit and their time together (since 2014) shows on this record.  I am looking forward to future output from them and seeing how a few tweaks here and there can really see them develop even more of that presence I mentioned at the start of this review.