Where Distant Spirits Remain

The city of Birmingham- whose claim to cultural fame is to have been the birthplace of heavy metal- is currently holding an exhibition of paraphernalia from the early years of once-local bands like Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and Napalm Death. What’s interesting about this renewed focus on local history- which has even earned some attention from broadsheet journalists who have spent the last 40 years sneering at those same musicians- is the extent to which, in those days, metal was the sound of grim West Midlands urban life, and more specifically the sweltering industrial workplaces in the likes of which Tony Iommi lost the tips of his fingers. What does this have to do with the brand new Scottish band Falloch? Well, precisely nothing at all. That’s the interesting thing.

Certain parts of the metal scene have been defined in recent years by the convergence and integration of folk, progressive and post-rock influences, with bands like Fen, Primordial, Negura Bunget or Petrychor disconnecting the music entirely from those dystopian roots and instead turning it into the soundtrack for dewy-eyed nature-worship. Yes, metal has changed an awful lot, but these bands aren’t really pursuing metal’s ‘evolution’- quite the reverse, in fact. They are changing it from a warts-and-all depiction of modern life into romantic anti-modernism. I’ve given highly positive reviews to three of those acts mentioned above, so as an avenue for musical expression I can’t complain. But maybe this also says something about the modern world as a whole: we’ve given up complaining about modernity on its own terms and just started wishing we could escape to a bronze-age village instead.

This is where Falloch come in. Only formed in 2010, the band’s debut situates them at the very forefront of the prog-folk-black scene. Their tremulous clean vocals and alt-rock melodic finesse enable strong comparisons with the windswept anthems of Anathema, but this is skilfully balanced with black metal heaviness and passages of gentle folk instrumentation that evoke Fen or Negura Bunget- albeit a much more accessible variant of those bands with no harsh vocals and a heavy side that is always leashed to melody. As such, the strengths of this type of music- its evocative atmospherics and its sense of tuneful melancholy- is greatly amplified. Opener We Are Gathering Dust is a superb track, based around wistful clean vocal melodies (perhaps the vocal delivery could be a bit stronger, though) and a richly layered instrumental backdrop (again, very reminiscent of the proggy clean passages on Fen’s last record) building subtly but irresistibly into a joyously blasting metal climax. To Walk Amongst the Dead illustrates the expert control the band have over the disparate elements of their sound, weaving capably between a folksy trickle of acoustic guitar an epic metal stride.

But then, at other times it reinforces the reservations I have about this type of music. A band like Negura Bunget manages to keep its folk instrumentation just about on the right side of the ‘folkloric and mysterious/cheesy and new age’ dividing line, but Falloch occasionally stray way onto the wrong one. Where We Believe, for example, features lengthy passages of flute warbling and ‘ooooh’ing female vocals that feel like they should be accompanying a businessperson’s soothing Friday night bubble-bath which, frankly, is not what I want metal to be about. It just feels too… nice; escapist music that is a world away from the confrontation and dystopia that the music of the bands mentioned in the first two paragraphs completely embodied.

For others, though, that will be an integral part of the appeal. For them, Where Distant Spirits Remain is an impressively constructed debut, wielding disparate ideas with a confidence you’d expect from seasoned veterans. For those seeking either a more accessible and anthemic spin on the earthy sounds of Fen or Negura Bunget, or a heavier, more blackened take on the proggy likes of Anathema or even Porcupine Tree, this could be a must-have.