Band:	Fell Voices
Album:	Untitled
Style:	Ambient black metal
Release date:	September 30, 2011
A review by:	Troy Killjoy

01. Untitled
02. Untitled

Fell Voices is one of those underground black metal projects that creep up from time to time, drop a nuke of an album, and then disappear behind enemy lines, never to be seen again. Fortunately, these Americans have more than just a few explosives. They've got an entire arsenal of malicious droning ingenuity, and fortunately for us, it seems as though the blitzkrieg will be ongoing. Consider me shell shocked.

So who are these guys? It's a collaborative project between musicians from New York and California, Gilead Media set them up the bomb, and now all your base are belong to them. Basically.

Okay enough with the militaristic analogies. Onto the music.

Fell Voices have constructed a sound made up of traditional raw black and some subtle post-rock reinforced by a tolerable amount of melody, wandering through the plains of despair while searching for sustenance - a miserable path that leads to nowhere... nowhere... nowhere. And it leaves you there at the bottom of the pit. Of nowhere.

It's not the soft lighthearted kind of black metal a la Alcest or Fen, incorporating shoegaze or obnoxious post-rock elements into the mix, but an enticing and engaging form of "Cascadian" black metal that wears its heart on its sleeve while forcing you to dig through layers of rock before reaching the core emotions: sorrow, regret, rage, loss, confusion. All of this negativity bursts forth through the dense foundation, tunneling skyward like a tornado of pain, plaguing the rich soils of the highest heavens with all the fury of a woman scorned.

It isn't in itself a drone metal album; far from it in fact. But there are moments that tend to drag like a cigarette made by Willy Wonka, and the overall repetition between the two songs highlights the minimalism, making for a relaxing - yet formidable - listen. As soon as you feel ready to pass into oblivion, dreaming of waterfalls and wood nymphs frolicking in the distance... the grounds open up and swallow the surrounding beauty in a black pit of fiery death, Hell consuming innocence and charm in mere moments.

This helps separate Fell Voices from the rest of the atmospheric black metal bands that follow the typical slow-paced, synth-heavy, mellow formula. The balance of good and evil is more cohesive, the mixture of love and hate is more encompassing... the ethereal massage is concluded with quite a rough happy ending.