Rain

Out of the recent wave of eco-metallers that have followed in the wake of Wolves In The Throne Room, Fauna are perhaps the most esoteric. By all accounts, the band are holed up in the same forests of the Pacific Northwest as their more successful brethren (as with the mythos around most black metal bands, I suppose it should be taken with a pinch of salt, however). They eschew publicity to an even greater extent than most bands in their field, only speaking in interviews as a collective entity rather than as individual members. And, perhaps most intimidatingly of all, Fauna have only released two songs to date, both of which come in at over an hour in length. Rain was initially recorded back in 2007 as a demo, along with follow-up The Hunt (which hopefully will be getting the reissue treatment soon). Luckily, the good people at Aurora Borealis (who have given some great demos a wider release, most notably L'Acephale's masterful Mord Und Totsclag) had the bravery to release this weighty, impenetrable slab of black metal to the wider world, and I must thank them for having done so, as Rain is one of the most exciting albums I've heard in a while. The music of Fauna is fairly similar to a lot of what's coming out of the US at the moment, a movement that eschews the anguish and self-pity that was fashionable a few years back in favour of something that resembles the righteous anger of Mother Nature herself. Mind-boggling track times aside, Fauna set themselves apart from the rest by having a slightly more punkish feel at times, particularly in the sloppy aggression in the drums. Although the guitars are the same drizzly blur that's so common in this sort of thing, Fauna prevail due to what they do with their guitars. I'm talking riffs. Fauna have certainly got a talent for writing them, and, most importantly, riding them for just the right amount of time, giving them enough time to lodge in the listener's brain but without overstaying their welcome. And when you consider that Fauna lay these riffs end on end for forty minutes without a respite, Rain really is a stunning achievement. But before we get to the more intense parts of the album, we must sit through a lengthy, (and by lengthy, I mean 20 minutes) intro. And it's this intro that no doubt will drive many listeners away, as it's not easy listening by any stretch of the imagination. And when you factor in that it takes 6 minutes for anything to happen, well, it's almost as if Fauna only wanted the most patient listeners to experience Rain. After six minutes of field recordings (which, as you might expect, are recordings of rainfall) a solitary guitar kicks in, and we're taken into a 15 minute acoustic piece that gradually builds in intensity throughout. At around the 15 minute mark, the vocals make their first appearance, a low, ominous chant that I guarantee will catch you out on your first listen. At this point, the strummed acoustics take on a darker, tenser progression that keeps on building. It's clear by this point that the music is building to something, we just don't know what yet. And at 22:40, it hits you, a wall of blastbeats and raw, melodic riffing that recalls Drudkh, or perhaps a less folky Bergtatt-era Ulver. Of course, Fauna could have decided to come straight out of the gate with this rather than spending 20 minutes messing around with acoustic guitars and field recordings, but to do so I feel would be to miss the point entirely. To use a rather obvious metaphor, the first 20 minutes or so of Rain are the storm clouds gathering, while the explosion of violence is the heavens themselves opening, a vicious yet oddly cleansing deluge that washes away hundreds of years' worth of man-made pollution. This sort of tense-and-release dynamic is nothing new, of course, but rarely does it manage to paint such a vivid picture. This flurry of tremelo picking continues until roughly the half-hour mark, when the piece transitions into something a bit more epic and doomy (the members' time in funeral doom lot Alethes seems to have rubbed off, then). It's all sinister, discordant melodies, droning chords, and Weakling-esque screaming. At 42 minutes, it explodes again, and it's clear that this pattern of dynamics repeats itself throughout the album, thankfully in enough different ways so that it doesn't get boring. Fauna haven't achieved anything like the media darling status Wolves In The Throne Room have, which is a shame as they may in fact be the better band (it's rumoured that Fauna encouraged Wolves In The Throne Room to take on a more eco-friendly attitude). Admittedly, the band's staunch refusal to publicize themselves doesn't help, but their music is out there and is something that should be heard by every serious black metal fan. Bring on The Hunt, I say, and let's just hope Rain wasn't some sort of fluke.