Metal Shock Finland (World Assault )

“Carrion Skies” the upcoming album from UK Progressive Post-Black Metallers FEN will be streamed in its entirety on Sputnik Music ahead of its scheduled release.  The album can be heard at this location, where it will be streaming until its European release date.

The album itself, which will be the band’s fourth full-length release, is set to hit the streets on Code 666, a sub-label of the Aural Music Group, on the 22nd November in Europe and the 2nd December in the USA.  Recorded, mixed and mastered by Greg Chandler at the Priory Recording Studio, Sutton Coldfield, England,  “Carrion Skies”  is available in four different versions,  including a standard jewel case CD, a DLP Gatefold color vinyl with a bonus track, which is limited to 500 copies, and two different limited edition wooden boxed sets, one of which is limited to only five copies, and which sold out within seconds of it being made available for pre-order.  Both the boxed sets contain  various rare and exclusive bonus tracks.  Artwork for “Carrion Skies” is by FEN bassist Grungyn.

Track listing for “Carrion Skies” as follows:

1 Our Names Written in Embers part 1 (Beacons of War)
2 Our Names Written in Embers Part 2 (Beacons of Sorrow)
3 The Dying Stars
4 Sentinels
5 Menhir – Supplicant
6 Gathering the Stones
7 Coffin Soil (exclusive bonus track DLP and Wood Box)
8  Trilithon (exclusive bonus track Wood Box)
9 Twilight Descends (rare bonus track Wood Box)

Details of the Brown Box Collector edition which comes in an 18 x 18 x 6 cm handcrafted brown wood box and is limited to 300 hand-numbered copies, and copies of which are still available, as follows:

• “Carrion Skies” jewel box CD wrapped in a wax sealed parchment envelope
• A second bonus CD featuring 38 minutes of music comprising 2 exclusive tracks and one rare song
• The “Carrion Skies” Card signed by the Band
• A Certificate of Authenticity
• A special 20% discount voucher for your next Aural webstore order

Formed in 2006, and with a three-man lineup of The Watcher  on guitars and vocals, Grungyn on bass and vocals, and Derwydd on drums, FEN is one of those bands whose atmospheric music  includes a harder edge that makes it difficult to slip into any of the multitude of narrowly defined categories.  The trio have been able to create and develop a sound that  appeals equally to fans of Black Metal, Shoegaze, Prog and Ambient, and “Carrion Skies” promises to expand even further on the intensity of emotion and atmosphere that characterizes FEN’s preceding three critically acclaimed albums.

According to The Watcher who recently gave fans and indication about what they could expect from “Carrion Skies”, the new album :  ‘… will be darker and more intense.  Invoking a spectrum of atmospheres from the unknowable coldness of distant stars to the blood and earth that thrums beneath our feet. This record takes the approach we started on ‘Dustwalker’ and builds on it further, whilst simultaneously acknowledging the more obscure-sounding roots of our debut.  Bleaker, harder, yet at the same time more ambient, this record moves us further away from the accepted tropes of what ‘post’ black metal should sound like in 2014.’

More information about Fen can be found on the band’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/fenofficial

The video for ” Menhir – Supplicant” can be seen here:

Six tracks from FEN, including  ” Menhir – Supplicant” from “Carrion Skies” can be heard on the band’s SoundCloud page below:

Fan-filmed footage of FEN performing “Of Wilderness and Ruin” from their 2011 album “Epoch” at 2014’s Black Arts Ceremony in Lyon, France can be seen below: