Band:	Fuath
Album:	II
Style:	Atmospheric black metal
Release date:	March 19, 2021
A review by:	RaduP

01. Prophecies
02. The Pyre
03. Into The Forest Of Shadows
04. Essence
05. Endless Winter

Darker times call for darker music. It was time for Saor's Andy Marshall to revive Fuath.

Andy Marshall really likes creating new projects and giving them names based on Norse/Gaelic words. "Fuath" means "hatred" in Gaelic, "Askival" means "Ash Tree Mountain" in Norse (and it's also a mountain in Scotland), "Àrsaidh" means "ancient" in Gaelic, and finally Saor means "free" in Gaelic. If you asked me a couple of years ago what most of these had in common other than the outlier Saor, I'd say that each of them were projects that were abandoned by Andy. Though it's release has been continuously delayed by pandemic-related issues, we now finally have another outlier: a second album from Fuath.

In terms of sound, Fuath was already an outlier. Saor and his other projects had a strong atmospheric black metal component, but it was always merged with a lot of Scottish folk, in different sounds and varieties. Fuath, though is a lot more streamlines and focused on the black metal side, atmospheric and melodic as it is, but also much colder and more aggressive. You can sense the mid 90s Norwegian influence on it (especially Windir), which is named to be the major influence on this record, but you can also really tell that the minor folk and synth embellishments on it come from the same person who is behind Saor.

II is a pretty simple and straight-forward release. 40 minutes, 5 songs, each in the 6-10 minute range, shrieking vocals, continuous blasts, music mostly lead by guitar and synth melodies. It not only doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it goes on a road very well travelled. II is a slight improvement over I in terms of performances and production value, but it also comes at a time when this sound is less exciting, when the charm of Andy Marshall trimming the folk lost its charm, and when you get a session drummer so you don't have to do the drums yourself, there's no excuse for the drumming to still feel underwhelming.

On the upside, the album does offer some pretty decent guitar and synth melodies, and you can tell that they're coming from a talented musician. But II really doesn't offer much else. Thankfully it's all in a bite-sized package.