Hello Frank, how are you doing? I hope you don’t suffer from the heat-wave too much!
Thanks Vera, it has certainly been warm recently! We had a four hour rehearsal weekend just past and even though there was aircon in the room, it still made for a rather sweaty experience. These aren’t really the ideal conditions for trying to channel the spirit of autumnal bleakness and cold desolation but not much one can really do about that sadly. At least it made the post-rehearsal craft ale afterwards feel even more deserved…

Let us start with the essence of the band. Fen is inspired by The Fens, the place where you grew up. Can you tell us about the impact, the characteristics of that area and the way it inspires you…
So our family moved out to the middle of the fens when I was about ten years old. We moved there from Devon in the south-west of England which is quite a green, hilly, rolling area – very much ‘traditional’ English ‘green-and-pleasant land’ sort of stuff. So to be moved to the other side of the country to an area that until the mid 19^th Century had basically been underwater was something of a change. As you can imagine for what is basically drained swampland, it is a very flat area – very similar to the Flanders areas of Northern Belgium – and it is sparsely populated. Long, straight roads cut across seemingly endless fields of peat with the occasional village or hamlet popping up here and there. There’s the odd patch of woodland but really, sparseness and bleakness are the defining characteristics. The skies are huge, birds circle lazily and languid waterways still drift across the landscape.

It’s quite unique – the sense of quiet and space can almost be overwhelming at times but there is also a sense of history in those black soils. One can feel the breath of ancient spirits whispering on the wind, of long-forgotten tales buried deep in the ancient earth and lost to the passage of time. Living amongst this landscape whilst simultaneously discovering extreme metal, learning the guitar and enduring the misery of adolescence at a pretty grim school really was the catalyst for a lot of the building-blocks that became Fen.

Quite early on in my musical journey – probably around 1996 or thereabouts – I realised that I wanted to create my own atmospheric black metal, balancing aggression with a sense of despair. I think even back then, without realising it, the landscape was influencing me subconsciously, seeming to reflect the inner landscapes of disaffection and isolation I was feeling at the time. These early efforts were of course incredibly primitive – buzzing guitars, keyboard drums and cheap synths on a murky cassette four track. Nevertheless, what Fen is now really grew from there – I moved to London to study in my late teens and started immersing myself in the London metal scene, joining bands and immersing myself in the city’s extreme metal culture. Despite this, I would frequently return to the fens and would still continue to write/record music by myself in this more atmospheric style. Indeed, I did actually put together a few pieces under the auspice of ‘Fenn’ on the trusty 4 track back in 1999-2000 so that could perhaps be considered the genesis of this whole thing. Of course, it really became fully crystalised in late 2005 when the decision was made to start the ‘Fen’ project (as that’s really what it was back then) as a ‘full band’ proposition – and it has just all grown from there. At the heart of it all however is the special atmosphere of the area where all of these notions took shape – the quiet, reflective sadness; the sparseness; the sense of cathartic solitude when setting out to wander amongst the emptiness. It’s a special place and certainly, in the last few years, we have drilled back into these core notions as a source of renewed inspiration. It continues to give.

It has been three years since the release of ‘Monuments Of Absence’ and that album showed a return to harsher black metal-ish material. Can we say that the new album follows that path too, but more and more in a perfected developing way?
‘Monuments…’ was for sure a more traditionally black metal album. It was still definitively ‘Fen’, it is important for us that we do not lose our sense of definition completely, however we certainly amplified the more aggressive areas of our sound. I don’t feel this is at the expense of our sense of ambience or emotion however, there are definitely plenty of expansive elements on that record. But yes, fuelled by the power of our new drummer (as he was at that time) JG and a sense of enveloping miserable darkness consuming the world, intensity and aggression were ramped up there.

With that in mind, we were (and always are when we work on a new album) conscious that we did not want to repeat ourselves on ‘Mourning Earth’. The darkness is still there – the world is certainly not a better place than when we wrote ‘Monuments…’ – however, we wanted to focus more on a sense of despairing reflection and weary surrender. Musically, we needed to explore space and weight – slowing things down a touch, allowing riffs, passages and themes to breathe, to repeat and expand. We definitely wanted to inject a sense of the organic into ‘Mourning Earth’ – jammed and improvised sections being a focus, recording live and seeing where the songs travel. It was a nice way to reconnect with how we used to work in the very early days of the band, the three of us playing in harmony, that indefinable ‘x-factor’ sense of connection and exploring where the music needs to go. I’d forgotten how exciting it is to work that way and it certainly has lent a palpable sense of energy to the album.

I know you are not an abundantly touring band, but did you manage to reach the folks after the previous release by doing some gigs?
We definitely did our best to. In fairness, we all have full-time jobs and various responsibilities that middle-aged life brings so going out on extensive tours isn’t something we can really indulge in at this stage. Nevertheless, we certainly managed to do a few shows to support ‘Monuments…’. We played quite a few festival slots – Alcatraz, Midgarsblot, Damnation and several others – as well as a small tour in the UK with Harakiri for the Sky. Playing live is important for us – it is challenging as there are only three of us looking to replicate material that can be quite layered in the studio, but that is also part of the essence of our existence. Can we get this stuff to work live, stripped down to the core components of the band? Can we deliver the essence of Fen without dozens of tracks pumping out of a laptop alongside us? We’re determined to play ‘real’ music, to keep it fully live and ensure that each performance is unique, that the immediacy and visceral nature of the live performance is there each time we play (as opposed to some guys stood still onstage playing along to a metronome and a bunch of pre-programmed/sequenced Wav files). In this day and age, with of a lot of people expecting ‘perfect CD sound’ when they watch bands play live, maybe that makes us something of an anachronism – but it’s how we work and it is how we want to present our music. One of the best live bands going now in my view is Yob – three guys, no playback tech, and it sounds/feels phenomenal, absolutely ‘another level’ stuff. That’s the standard. That’s the benchmark for me. If we can get anywhere close to that level of delivery then I will be a very happy man.

When did you feel the need to start writing new material and what can you tell about the writing process this time?
I’ll be honest, we are always writing. New material is the lifeblood of any band in my view, if the creative well dries up and you’re not feeling the drive to create more music, the band is over. Sure, you can plod on as a ‘greatest hits’ outfit but you’ll only ever be a tribute band to yourself. So it’s great for me that that energy is still there, that the drive to create is still burning brightly within us. Some of the material on ‘Mourning Earth’ was composed prior to us recording ‘Monuments…’ which perhaps indicates how much of a body of material we have been writing!

We definitely adopted some different compositional approaches with this album however. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of passages were developed from improvisation within the rehearsal room (the last 4-5 minutes of ‘Moor’ for example). This was actually how we used to work years ago and it was really refreshing to bring this approach back to the table as it were. ‘Monuments…’ by and large was a very ‘written’ album with the vast majority of it being composed in quite a tight, structured way. This time, whilst a lot of the material on the new album was initially quite tightly composed, we decided to loosen the approach a touch. There’s a deliberate expansiveness to much of ‘Mourning Earth’, an elemental ebb-and-flow very much intended to reflect the concept of the album itself.

What leaps to the eye is the title ‘Elemental Part One: Mourning Earth’. It indicates that we are starting a new concept with sequels. So please, tell us anything you want to reveal about this new musical journey…
The concept of ‘Elemental’ had been circling around in my brain for some time. It really started to take shape as we were recording ‘Monuments…’. This idea of digging deep into the fundamental elements of our surroundings to not only use these as a metaphor to deliver a personal journey conceptually but also as a springboard for musical inspiration. Trying to deliver a sonic interpretation of earth and water, rock and ice… this was the spark that brought the whole idea to life. Almost ‘jamming with the elements’ one could say!

As is so often the case, once a concept takes shape, it becomes an upwards spiral of inspiration and motivation. We knew we were working towards this ‘elemental’ idea and this became the prism through which our creativity was channelled. It’s an exciting time in the creative process – watching things take shape, instinctively knowing where (and where not) to tread musically, ensuring that everything intensifies and accentuates the journey. The material really was flowing at this point, building in the rehearsal room and also being crafted at home by myself and Grungyn. It fairly quickly started becoming quite ‘big’ and so thoughts of putting out a double album began to emerge – and yes, I know this is one of the most pretentious things a band can do!

It did feel like an idea that needed to be explored however. There was a sense of flow to the tracks that almost made sense to be broken into two ‘halves’, each one focusing on a different elemental aspect. In the end, we decided instead to approach this as a diptych – two thematically linked full length albums in their own right. We felt this made more sense ultimately – it enabled us to fully focus on each of the elemental aspects we wanted to focus on (Earth and Water) as well as getting us into the studio more swiftly. It had been over four years since we’d last been in a studio at this point and we were absolutely itching to get back in and start making some noise! So with all of this in mind, delivering ‘Elemental’ as a two-part series of full length albums made perfect sense.

So to underline this, Part 2 is very much in the process of being created – the material is more or less fully written and is being worked on in detail in the rehearsal room. Titles, lyrics, concepts and artwork are all taking form and all three of us are deeply excited as to where this second instalment is heading. I really do believe that the ‘Elemental’ diptych is the most ambitious and exciting creative project we have undertaken so far in our career.

The subtitle ‘Mourning Earth’, does it also refer to some personal thoughts about the role of nature in people’s lives – and how mankind can be so cruel for nature? A kind of warning from The Watcher so to speak?
It’s not quite as direct as that, although there is certainly an element of this that plays throughout the imagery within the lyrics. In keeping with this idea of reconnecting with the earlier days of the band, the concept here is more one of ‘externalising the internal’ – in that sense, the Mourning Earth really acts as a metaphor for one’s own mind. In this case, it is a mind assailed by depression. I’d thought long and hard about how far I wanted to travel down such a road as it is quite a challenging topic and one that it could be argued, is a little overdone in the black metal scene. After all, there is a whole subgenre (DSBM) effectively dedicated to such an idea!

Nevertheless, it is important to me that this is dealt with in my own way and in a way that aligns with the ambience of Fen. It couldn’t be some sort of shrieking, melodramatic, quasi-nihilistic revelling in suicidal anguish. Rather, we wanted to tackle this in a bleaker fashion – to really channel the unending grey bleakness and relentless torpor that such a condition engenders. The titles are short, to-the-point representations of various facets of depression, rendered through landscape imagery rooted in expressions of the earth.

All the song titles seem to refer to huge monumental forces and stones/rocks in nature (tectonic plates, glaciers, massif) Is this an album about the element ‘earth’? (I might be mistaken)
It is indeed – very much using the element earth and various facets/manifestations of this (rocks, soil, the seabed, plains) as a metaphor for the mind’s journey through stages of depression. Pain of course, a sense of isolation, hopelessness, abandonment – it can be a lonely and troubling place to be and this certainly aligns with the extremes of the earth. Punishing tundra; wind-blasted mountain summits; desolate moorland; the churning roil of the planet’s very mantle itself. It’s quite a personal expression in a sense, however it aligns with much of the original premise of what Fen represents lyrically/conceptually. This really helped us refine and shape the musical direction also, providing an impetus to create songs that were weightier, slower, taking time to unfurl.

A featuring point is that you took more time to let the songs develop and build them up, while ‘Monuments’ had that kind of ‘urgency’, isn’t it?
‘Monuments…’ certainly presents urgency in the speed and intensity of the delivery but we did work meticulously on the pieces there. Everything was fully instrumentally demoed before we went in to record, we really wanted to work on the details and ensure we allowed each song to reach its maximum potential. The approach here on ‘Mourning Earth’ was actually quite similar. Whilst there was actually a lot more spontaneity in the development of these pieces as we organically worked a lot of them up live in the rehearsal room, a lot of meticulous attention to detail was also required. Improvisation, experimenting with accenting, drum patterns, time signatures, feels – all of this stuff took place to really help bring the songs to life.

And as before, we ensured everything was fully demoed before the recording. We went deep on that – worked out all the vocal lines, effect combinations, texture/guitar overdubs. It ended up being a very valuable process and we actually did a lot of experimentation at this stage. Certainly from a vocal perspective, it was really useful to allow us to spend a lot of time on layering and harmonising. I would say that was a big factor in the amount of clean vocal harmonising and texture present on ‘Mourning Earth’, it’s a very important part of the sound. Ultimately, we were very ready to record by the time the studio sessions rolled around!

Another feature that deserves attention, is the stable line-up of the band with your brother Adam and drummer J.G. The fact that you know each other so long, seems to be important for Fen, making this development of the band together, isn’t it?
The lineup does feel nicely settled now, that is true. Obviously myself and Grungyn have been doing this for decades so our connection goes without saying – as for JG, he has been in the band for nearly six years now and we’ve been through a lot together so he’s absolutely on board with where we are and where we are going. Add to that, I’d known him for several years before then and it’s clear there’s a real bond between us. He is absolutely part of the brotherhood and that’s important. For a band like ours, it’s essential there’s that unspoken, organic communication where we’re all on the same page, both musically and in terms of outlook. We’ve had some challenges in our time – what band doesn’t? – and some slow periods but here on the eve of our eighth album being released, it feels like we’re in our strongest phase yet. We can’t wait to properly showcase the songs from the new album live and the compositional process is flowing with abundance – Elemental Part 2 is pretty much written and is being rehearsed intensely alongside the live sets we are preparing for later this year/early 2027. We’re even looking ahead to the album BEYOND that…

So yes, the three of us are all full of passion and commitment to this thing we have created, even though we’re twenty years deep into it now!