### Fen/De Arma: Towards the shores of the end

#### 23/05/11 || Love Lagerkvist

Now this CD comes with whopping 50 minutes of audio split between the post-black metal of British Fen and the “dark metal” of Swedish De Arma. As a casual fan of the foremost, I’m happy to report that Fen’s already pretty unique blend of shoegazing melodies and blackened aggression just gets better and better with every release, progressing into grand dynamics and cleverly utilized cleans that makes for a positively spellbinding experience. Sadly, this is not something you can attribute to the music of De Arma. While it’s not the worst thing ever in itself, what happens it that this “dark metal” (a fancy word for blackgaze) just seems like a weak copy of the Brittish swampmonsters that occupy the first part of the disc. Therefore:

8/10 for Fen, 4/10 for De Arma and a solid 6/10 for the package as a whole.