FADING AEON: “FADING AEON”

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May 202026
 

(DGR prepared the following extensive review of the third album, self-titled, by the German epic melodic death metal band Fading Aeon, which was released in March of this year.)

It seems if nothing else, 2026 is going to be the summoner of old ghosts for yours truly as we find ourselves once again cycling back to review a band that we started covering over seven years ago. Now, if you’ll please ignore the part that we’re coming up on the site being nearly-seventeen as well, a few of us are going to stand up and listen to our knees pop louder than the thunder and lightning shows that’ve been happening outside our windows recently. Is it any wonder we seem to attract groups that’ve taken long hiatuses between albums for new premieres?

Germany’s Fading Aeon are one of a fleet of three-piece melodeath groups that’ve appeared in the past decade – apparently they have little time for the bullshit of your standard four-to-five piece lineup – although they occupy a different musical sandbox than most, favoring epic tales of battle and heroism instead, with the song lengths to match. It hasn’t been uncommon for the Fading Aeon crew to release an album consisting of five songs and yet still have a run time sailing well over forty-minutes in range.

The group’s newest self-titled album, which saw release in mid-March, is no different in that regard. As the band have matured, so too has their songwriting ability, and while they started out incredibly ambitious, what has made Fading Aeon something to watch is how they’ve grown into the role that they sought out to start with. Continue reading »

FADING AEON: “THE VOICES WITHIN”

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Feb 152022
 

 

(This is DGR‘s review of the new second album by the German melodic death metal band Fading Aeon, which was released last December.)

Many, many, many moons ago in a long forgotten time I reviewed the debut release by German prog-melodeath act Fading Aeon. The group’s first release was a solid hybrid of the mass of genres that melodeath has become over the years, including pulling in influences from folk metal bands to the more long-form and journey-minded groups like Be’Lakor.

Debut releases hold a lot of potential and Fading Aeon’s A Warrior’s Tale was one style of ‘promising’ release, with much of it feeling like it was the group laying a foundation for things to come. While they had already solidified in a sound for that release, it still hinted that the group had more ideas toying with them than what had initially been put down. Where the group would head in their followup was an interesting prospect at the very least, so while it may have landed in a quieter time of the year in the opening weeks of December 2021, Fading Aeon saw fit to act upon that with their sophomore album The Voices Within. Continue reading »

A DGR REVIEW ROUND-UP (PART 4B): FADING AEON — “A WARRIOR’S TALE”

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Oct 082019
 

 

(This is the second subpart of a fourth installment in DGR’s effort to catch up on reviews of 2019 releases he wants to recommend, with this 3-part fourth post devoted to melodic death metal. Today the subject is the debut full-length by the German band Fading Aeon, which was released on July 5th.)

At five songs and over forty minutes of material — with the Bandcamp download including an instrumental version of the title song if you really want to stretch — it was initially hard to place what exactly Fading Aeon’s A Warriors Tale was going to sound like. A Warrior’s Tale was released on the group’s Bandcamp in July, but became a victim of circumstance on my end and thus became a late-in-the-year discovery — one of the longer waits of any of these groups to become part of this review round up.

The three-piece could have been any number of things, with song lengths that stretched well into the nine-minute range, although their album art and logo suggested they probably weren’t a doom band. With a name like A Warrior’s Tale, my best guess would’ve been the sort of keyboard-and-guitar-interplay-heavy, folk-melodeath of a group like Wintersun. I seem to find one band every year that is really good that also really loves that particular slice of the melodeath scene and has absorbed heavy influence from it.

After a lot of listens to A Warrior’s Tale I can say that I was partly right, as Fading Aeon are an epic melodeath band, heavy on the keys and long song lengths — but not so reliant on speed as one might expect, instead favoring an approach that makes this trio sound massive, and with a pleasant surprise on the vocal front to boot. Continue reading »