Review: Fellwarden – Legend

Style: pagan black metal, epic doom metal, melodic death metal (mostly harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Insomnium, Moonsorrow, Atlantean Kodex, Bathory, Panopticon, Shylmagoghnar
Country: United Kingdom
Release date: 14 June 2024

For millennia, music has captured the collective consciousness of humankind, a receptacle for tradition, worship of various deities, and, most importantly for our review here today, storytelling. One man black metal band Fellwarden (made up of The Watcher, guitarist of Fen) embark on a musical quest, chronicling the story of David Gemmell’s Legend, which while I haven’t read it personally, our resident fantasy expert Zach assures me has a powerful concept. On the album Legend, each track represents a wall of Legend’s (the book) fortress, guaranteeing a storytelling and musical treat of fantastical proportions. 

Legend (the album, from here on out) flows with the grace of its greatest peers—Insomnium’s Winter’s Gate and Moonsorrow’s V: Hävitetty are good touchstones—though contained in briefer 8–10 minute packages with little sacrifice to grandeur. The moment-to-moment isn’t the focus but rather the track structuring and stream of pristine pagan black metal; for example, from the onset with opener “Exultance,” Fellwarden carries the listener away with resplendent epic doom metal guitar tones, Viking choirs, and glorious blast beats which burst the track open into full black metal majesty. But it’s the sweeping songwriting gestures which captivate me; amazing moments aplenty there are in “Exultance”—the “shoulder to shoulder” chant in the middle chief among them—but I more so remember the lengthy buildup and release in the back half of the track or the effortlessly varied transitions of the front.

To provide a backdrop for the songwriting to excel, Fellwarden employ a spacious production similar to modern Moonsorrow, especially in the thundering drums. The production forms an air of vastness, a glimpse into the sublime. However, the audio engineering is also imperfect with the choirs being too quiet in the mix: if you’re gonna have a badass men’s choir, let them belt it out rather than be pushed down! Along the same lines, Fellwarden are never as orchestrally bombastic as Finsterforst nor as shreddy as Havukruunu or Sig:Ar:Tyr, and I think the inclusion of either (or even better, both) would increase the power of Legend, creating more iconic highlights in the stream of consistently great black metal parts. My only other complaint is the spoken word, the narration feeling flat and lifeless. 

One track has no issues and is among the unarguable best songs of 2024: “Desperation.” With bardish guitar strums, the intro earns its length by setting the atmosphere so exquisitely, just like Panopticon did last year. The chord progression and riffs throughout this song are simply beautiful and remind me all over again why I love pagan black metal so much. Although unfortunately quiet, the near constant backing choirs are epic; the drumming reminds me of the Cascadian scene’s reflective love of nature; and the reintroduction of the main melody from a clean section is a classic Insomnium move pulled off fantastically. Unstoppable in its melodicism and magnificent peaks, “Desperation” makes Legend worth listening to on its own. 

Black metal can be many different things: bland second-wave worship, scorching hot riff fests like Kvaen, disturbing dissonances like Dodecahedron… I argue it has the fewest limitations of any metal genre except for the umbrella term of prog. Listening to Fellwarden convinces me that this style of epic pagan black metal is absolutely one of the best and purest ways to realize the style. Fellwarden simply wrote a legendary fifty-six minutes of fantasy black metal.

Recommended tracks: Desperation
You may also like: Finsterforst, Fen, Havukruunu, Sig:Ar:Tyr, Árstíðir Lífsins
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Eisenwald – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Fellwarden is:
Frank Allain (The Watcher) – Lead vocals; lead, rhythm and acoustic guitars; choirs
Alasdair Dunn – Drums
Mark Harrington – Bass Guitar
Adam Allain – Choirs
Sean Darling – Narration