I’ve been living with All Is Far Away, the upcoming release from blackgaze outfit Æl-Fierlen, for over a month now and in all honestly, it’s been hard not to put these thoughts down sooner, because this is a record that deserves to be talked about.
Out September 19th, All Is Far Away is nothing short of a stunning work — a brilliant, immersive journey that has stayed with me long after each listen.
What strikes me first about this album is just how fully formed it feels. Blackgaze can sometimes lean too far in one direction — either drowning itself in walls of distortion or leaning so heavily on dreamlike atmospheres that the heaviness feels ornamental. Æl-Fierlen avoid that pitfall completely. Their sound is expansive but purposeful, balancing shimmering melody with crushing weight in a way that feels organic, not forced.
Listening to All Is Far Away feels less like putting on an album and more like stepping into a landscape. There’s an endless horizon to it — vast stretches of sound that move like shifting weather, light breaking through heavy clouds, moments of stillness giving way to violent storms of distortion. It carries the listener somewhere distant, but never in a way that feels alien; instead, it feels like memory, like déjà vu, as if these melodies had been waiting somewhere inside you, only now stirred awake.
There’s a melancholy woven into every note, but it’s never suffocating. Instead, Æl-Fierlen transform sorrow into something strangely luminous. The record aches, yes, but it also glows — finding beauty in isolation, in distance, in the fragile tension between collapse and transcendence. It’s that duality, the interplay between grief and grace, that defines the experience of All Is Far Away.
What’s remarkable is how natural the flow of the record feels. It doesn’t play like a collection of songs but rather like one continuous movement, each passage bleeding into the next with an almost cinematic patience. Time seems to dissolve when you’re inside it. Ten minutes can feel like two, or a single sustained note can stretch into infinity — Æl-Fierlen bend perception the way a filmmaker bends light.
The guitars, in particular, are the soul of this album. They don’t just play riffs; they create terrain. At times they crash like waves on stone, jagged and unrelenting, only to retreat into fragile, crystalline melodies that hang in the air like frost. The percussion anchors this shifting expanse — precise and restrained when needed, wild and free when required, but never mechanical. It feels human, tactile, like the heartbeat that reminds you this is not some abstract soundscape but living, breathing music.
And then there are the vocals, which refuse to sit comfortably in one space. They’re screams that dissolve into the mist, chants that echo like a voice heard across a valley, whispers that seem too close, too intimate. They’re less a guide and more a presence — a reminder that within all this grandeur lies something profoundly human, fragile, and mortal.
Maybe it’s the Irish in me, but I am a sucker for a beautiful voice and Stephanie Moffatt has one of the most heart-achingly beautiful voices in the world.
What All Is Far Away does better than almost any record I’ve heard this year is capture the feeling of being lost and found at the same time. There’s a weight to it — a sense of distance, longing, and grief — but instead of pushing you further into despair, it feels like the music is reaching out, offering a hand through the fog. It reminds you that isolation can also be communion, that silence can hold its own kind of conversation.
The album seems to speak to that strange space we all carry inside us — the one that feels empty, but isn’t. When the walls of sound rise and crash, it feels like every unspoken thought you’ve ever carried suddenly has a voice. When the music retreats into stillness, it feels like it’s listening, giving room for your own emotions to unfold. That’s the brilliance of Æl-Fierlen: they don’t just play to you, they play with you, letting your own inner life shape the experience.
I’ve found myself turning to this record in different moods, and it never feels the same twice. Some nights, it’s devastating. Other times, it feels almost uplifting, like a promise that beauty and sorrow are forever entwined. All Is Far Away doesn’t give you answers, but it gives you the kind of catharsis that only comes from knowing you’re not alone in your searching.
All Is Far Away is not just an album — it’s a horizon, a place you can step into when the world feels too sharp or too small. Æl-Fierlen have crafted something that feels timeless, a work that doesn’t just demand to be heard but to be felt, absorbed, carried with you. It’s music as refuge, music as mirror, music as sky.
When it ends, you don’t feel like it’s over; you feel like you’ve returned, changed in some subtle way, as though you’ve walked through shadow and found a kind of light on the other side. That’s the quiet magic of this record: it doesn’t insist, it doesn’t declare, it simply is — and in being, it becomes unforgettable.
Come September 19th, when All Is Far Away is finally released, I suspect it won’t just be one of the year’s great blackgaze albums. It will be one of those rare records that people return to, again and again, because it gives them something beyond sound — it gives them space to feel, to reflect, to breathe. And that is a gift.
CHOICE CUT: Ællmiht
RATING: 4.5 OUT OF 5
RATING SYSTEM:
- 0: Fucking Shit
- 1: Shit
- 2: Not Bad Shit
- 3: Pretty Good Shit
- 4: Amazing Fucking Shit
- 5: The Best Shit You Will Ever Hear
