Æl-Fierlen were a band that, until a few days ago, I didn’t know exsisted. However, such is the power of the interweb that our paths have finally crossed, and I couldn’t be happier that they did.
I believe in music that matches my mood, or at least music that can spark an emotional reaction within me, and I prize this over anything else. You could be the most technically gifted band or artist in the world, but if your music doesn’t speak to me then I can’t hear what you are saying. This is why I get sent a lot of music that will never find its way onto the BMA. Not because I dislike it, just because it doesn’t light up my soul in the way it should. It’s why I prefer John Lee Hooker to Steve Vai, for example.
Fortunately for me, Æl-Fierlen speaks to me so loudly that I’m surprised I’m not deafened by everything they are telling me. Not bad for a band that have only released two tracks so far.
To Sleep Eternal is their first offering and it is a hauntingly beautiful eight minute piece that contains some of the most evocative vocals to ever grace a song, any song. It is an ode to sleep, to the eternal long slumber we all face when the night finally catches up with us, and as someone who is entering the twilight of his days, it touches me in a way that the younger me would have just walked off. Nobody like to be reminded of their own mortality, but when it is delivered in such a way as Æl-Fierlen delivers it here, then maybe, just maybe, it’s time to accept the inevitable.
Eðe is their second offering and is the polar opposite of To Sleep Eternal. Though both tracks clock in at eight minutes, that is the only similarity they share, as where To Sleep Eternal is a gentle, dark lullaby to death, Eðe is a full on visceral black metal assault that is probably the reason you are taking your last breath.
It is brutal and takes no prisoners, swinging it’s axe into the face of anyone unlucky enough to get in its way, and even during its less frantic moments, of which there are a few across its lengthy runtime, there is always the sense that Eðe is just one second away from snapping again, ripping your head off, and shitting down your neck. The two songs are such a case of night and day that without Steph Moffatt’s angelic voice being the connecting facror between the two, then you would think this was two different bands. And that’s how it should be.
I bang on and on about how I admire bands who push boundaries and Æl-Fierlen are a perfect example of this.They could’ve played it easy after the release of To Sleep Eternal and just followed up a superb emotional piece with another superb emotional piece, but instead they decided to go for the jugular and release some pure black metal black magic with Eðe.
Æl-Fierlen seem to me to be a band that will refuse to have a label stuck to them, and if these two tracks are the shape of things to come I am more than ready for release number three.
It’ll probably be some fucked up thrash metal jazz fusion.
Either way I’m here for it and you can be as well. Just head over to the Æl-Fierlen Bandcamp page and check them out for yourself.
