Fvnerals – Let the Earth be Silent [Things You Might Have Missed 2023]

While many within the genre drift towards the floaty, gazey, and even anodyne, my favorite kind of post-metal is the dark kind. Post-metal that uses resonant ambience, deep atmosphere, and echoing vocals to create a powerful, weighty sense of foreboding. So it was that back in February, Fvnerals, whose path and mine had not yet crossed, made me sit up and notice them. It seems that in the past, Fvnerals played it a little softer, and safer, with a mellower bent. But this time they’ve plumbed the depths of horror and melancholy. Coming somewhere between the nightmarish ominousness of Vous Autres and the brooding sulkiness of Darkher, Fvnerals pitched their approach just right to suck me in. And probably you too.

Let the Earth Be Silent is the perfect title. This album commands total attention—everything else must fade away as it totally envelops you. With calamitous bass drum branding a pattern into the mist (“Ashen Era,” “Annihilation,” “Yearning”); cymbals crashing into a void of ringing sound (“Barren”); moaning, haunting vocals rising and fading away; low, core-shaking riffs shuddering; and foghorn chords bending into the feedback (“Ashen Era,” “For Horror Eats the Light”), this thing is truly massive. Mood music in a particularly pure form, while its seven tracks are cleanly separated by silence, they feel simultaneously interwoven into a dark dream sequence—or perhaps that should be “nightmare sequence.” There’s a certain attitude that precipitates turning on Let the Earth Be Silent, and I found myself sinking into that attitude more and more as the year progressed. Drawn back in by its darkness.

Let the Earth Be Silent by FVNERALS

Two main threads run through Let the Earth Be Silent: dread and lamentation. On the side of dread come the stretches of ever-increasing tension, as a ritualistic heartbeat ever so slightly increases the pulse (“Descent,” “Yearning”); wavering dissonant drone grows layers of muffled tremolo and eerie singing (“Ashen Era,” “For Horror Eats the Light,” “Barren”), or sharp exhales punctuate crescendoing horn and softly shuffling percussion (“Rite”). The low rumbles of bass, and deep atmospheres, infused with sinister minor melody and soft suggestions of riffery (“Annihilation,” “Barren”) create a goosebump-inducing aura of fear too, one that follows you across the record. But equally as penetrating are the mournful, multi-tracked female vocals, harmonizing as they rise and softly fade. These are the lament. While consistently affecting in their often-wordless cries of falling grace, they are particularly haunting on “Descent” and “Barren.” Songs will ramp up the anxiety, see eerie repetitious vocalizations ring over and over; stretch velvety post-metal ambience across ominous pauses, then with crashes of chords and percussion, the dam will break, and powerful poignant ululations will careen upwards out of the murk (“Ashen Era,” “Descent,” “Yearning”). Or they whisper and moan, layer over layer, and break out in pathetic, delicate refrains (“For Horror Eats the Light,” “Yearning”). And it’s beautiful.

As an incredibly atmospherically-centered post-metal album, you really do have to be in the right headspace to get everything you’re meant to out of it. While some tracks struck me immediately and indelibly (“Descent,” “Barren”), it was only when I gave it the full attention it deserves that it opened up and swallowed me whole. However, swallow me it absolutely did.

Tracks to Check Out: ”Descent,” “For Horror Eats the Light,” “Yearning,” “Barren”

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