AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: FELL OMEN — “BORN TO SIEGE”

(written by Islander)

Near the very last day of 2024 we hosted the premiere of a song with an arresting (and peculiar) name — “Dungeon Metal Punks Besieging Digital Castles” — presented through a video in which the music was performed by a figure in a suit of medieval armor, who wielded a hurdy-gurdy in the song’s opening. “Bonkers” was one of the words we used to describe the experience. Other words included “wild,” “fantastical,” “sinister,” “something like a hybrid between a battle charge and an exhilarating folk dance, both of them time-traveled from the Middle Ages and envisioned through the lens of a black crystal.”

That song was from Invaded By a Dark Spirit, the debut album of the Greek band Fell Omen, the solo work of one Spider of Pnyx and his first official “metal” release after performing live in dark ambient, neofolk, and noise settings, after contributing to the music of Mystras and Spectral Lore, and after also gaining recognition for crafting intricate cover art under the alias Gilded Panoply for black metal and dungeon synth artists.

We might have speculated that Invaded By a Dark Spirit would be a one-and-done curiosity, but it was received with considerable enthusiasm among listeners and reviewers (including us), and so Fell Omen has thankfully forged onward. Today we happily spread the news that in August True Cult Records will release a second Fell Omen album, this one named Caelid Dog Summer.

And we also happily have for you today the premiere of another Fell Omen video for the album’s first advance track, “Born To Siege“.

True Cult previews the new album as one that “drives the project into even harsher, more chaotic territory, fusing classic heavy metal, scorched-earth punk aggression, and medieval black metal.” We also have these words from Spider of Pnyx:

“The second Fell Omen album was made while people were still digesting the sound and production of the debut, which was a bit controversial for some of them. After careful consideration, I decided to ignore the people hating on the old tape sound and I just made it worse by introducing a lot of flangers and phasers. I tried to make it MORE Fell Omen in every way. It has more heavy metal riffs, more solos, more punk and more dungeon. A couple of these new tunes were first written before the OG album came out, others are brand new, but what they have in common is that they all hurt.”

“Born To Siege” might indeed hurt you, but it’s a good kind of hurt, maybe like fingernails drawing blood during certain activities we can’t speak of explicitly in a family publication.

The song is mid-paced in its momentum, with Fell Omen‘s big armored steed proceeding at a canter rather than a head-long gallop (a canter with a punk groove, to be sure). The riffing is raw, and its livid throb carries a dismal and degraded mood, but it’s also kind of cold and cruel.

The music also flares upward and emits quivering horror-realm frequencies. The riffing’s livid pulse begins to sound more fiendish and more desperate, but also more haughty. The soloing burrows that riff into the head in piercing but still pernicious tones, and it does so with increasing intensity as the fretwork becomes frantic and shrill, elaborating the moods of menace, madness, and pain.

What will hurt the worst are the larynx-ruining, mind-lacerating screams with which Spider of Pnyx ejects the words, the prime source of chaos within a song that will otherwise get your head moving, with diabolical hooks spiked into it.

And finally, before we actually get to the song, here’s what Spider of Pnyx has shared about the video it comes with:

“When it came time to shoot a new video for the 2nd album, me and Shroudweaver (True Cult Records co-owner) decided to hit the DIY aesthetic of our previous videos even harder. So we got an old tape camcorder and went to fucking town. I have this thing for old CRT TVs and glitch gear, so I put the camcorder footage through all that, and we got this nasty lo-fi vibe going, which I think it fits the old tape driven sound of Fell Omen‘s music to a T.”

CREDITS: “Fell Omen remains a one-person operation: every instrument, every shriek, every tape hiss and hypnotic spiral is conjured by Spider of Pnyx, who also records and mixes the material at True Cult Records HQ. Final mastering was completed at Nidstang Studio, retaining the raw edge while injecting just enough chaos into the mix to make the needles tremble.” Of course, the cover art was created by Gilded Panoply.

True Cult will release Caelid Dog Summer on August 15th, and it’s available for pre-order now (links below).

P.S. I did not know what a “Caelid Dog” was. So I searched. It appears to be a kind of monstrous dog found in the Caelid region within the world of Elden Ring.

PRE-ORDER:
https://fellomen.bandcamp.com/album/caelid-dog-summer

FELL OMEN:
https://fellomen.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/spiderofpnyx
https://www.facebook.com/fellomenband/

TRUE CULT RECORDS:
https://truecultrecords.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/truecultrecords