Upon my first listen one thing was clear – Fen is no longer following in the footsteps of other bands. Listening to The Malediction Fields it’s clear that Fen took a great deal of inspiration from Agalloch. In the intervening five years the band has distanced itself from them and developed its own sound based more on post-rock and less on atmospheric black metal and neofolk. Now, ordinarily I’m all for a band breaking free of its influences but Fen hasn’t managed to stumble upon a formula that works quite yet. Instead of an atmospheric black metal foundation, Carrion Skies is clearly based in post-rock with elements of progressive metal in the song structures, which has mixed success. The band tries to link passages of tremolo’d post-black metal sections with breaks of post-rock melancholy, but these breaks are poorly timed and often interrupt the songs’ flow. These breaks occur without warning several times during each track’s overly long runtime. The tracks feel like they are stretched out to two or even three times their natural length to accommodate these moody post-rock sections. I’d be able to forgive the numerous breaks if they were strategically places to offer respite from blistering black metal assaults or after a huge tremolo buildup, but these just have no purpose other than stretching a solid 40 minute album into a 60 minute stinker.

And another downfall of this album is its wishy-washy black metal parts. Like most post-black metal bands, the metal sections lack staying power. Some of the riffs are actually good, but in the context of the album they’re just too pretty, too uplifting, and too weak. The album is heavily loaded on the soft side of things, but where’s the bite? Where’s the aggression? While it isn’t unusual for a post-black metal band to have these failings, it’s disappointing to see Fen fall into these easily avoidable pitfalls. Due to a lack of fury the album comes off as easy listening, a deceptively misleading term because it’s a real struggle to make it through this album’s hour-long runtime. The absence of aggression makes the album almost too boring to keep on as background music! 

I can’t say that I’m disappointed with Carrion Skies as I had no real expectations, but it is a shame nonetheless. I saw the album appear on several esteemed “best of 2014” lists but it seems that was just hype. I’m not a huge fan of the post-black metal genre at the best of times, but this just serves as an affirmation of my general distain. Poorly written songs, a lack of energy, and some startlingly bad clean vocals make this for one of the year’s most overrated albums.