Fauna - The hunt

Genre : Atmospheric black metal

Ok, once again, it's more folk in the lyrical approach than in the actual sound. However, The hunt is a rich, coherent and deeply dark concept album, which before a remastering made at some point, consisted in a single 79 minutes-long track. Now it's been divided into 7 tracks (remastering also replaced programmed drums by real ones, so I recommand this version instead), but the original idea has been kept, this album describes a hunting journey across deep dark forests. Musically speaking, it's atmospheric black metal to the roots, meaning background black vocals, agressive yet somehow softened guitars, intense drumming, replaced by ritualistic percussions on soft parts, those mostly consisting in gloomy ambient sounds, played with synths or electronics rather than actual folk instruments. Yet, Fauna succeeds into setting a strong dark atmosphere in this release, and this album sounds deeper than most folk influenced releases, maybe because of the themes used, the lack of melodies, the way it's played, and the bleak nature it depicts perfectly.

Here you can listen to a couple excerpts of that release, Part II (from 15:00 to 30:00) and Part IV (from 45:00 to 1:00:00). Enjoy!