Review: Fer de Lance – Fires on the Mountainside
Epic Heavy Molten Lava
Hailing from Chicago comes Fer de Lance, whose style tends toward the epic heavy and doom side of things. Their 2022 debut, The Hyperborean, was a good showing of impressive potential that felt like an interesting mix of Atlantean Kodex and Hammerheart-era Bathory. After this pretty cool debut, they are now back three years later with their second album, Fires on the Mountainside. This year has been very strong in terms of modern traditional metal thanks to the likes of Century, Black Sword Thunder Attack, Vultures Vengeance and Tower. I’m curious to see how this band stands in a strong competitive scene right now with their newest offering.
The band starts off the album with their longest song, the title track “Fires on the Mountainside.” Despite the almost 13-minute runtime, Fer de Lance does a great job mixing things about. The blend of epic doom singing, the folkier tone to the riffs and some harsher vocals thrown in makes for a very compelling start and taste of what’s to come. Following this track is “Ravens Fly (Dreams of Daidalos)” that comes out with an epic opening. This track shows off more of the heavier vocals that feel like a welcome addition for this release, as well as having a faster pace that the band fares well with here.
While this track isn’t as eventful as the previous two, “Death Thrives (Where Walls Divide)” feels like it gets even better as the track progresses, with a nicely done guitar solo to boot. The next track, “Fire & Gold” shows off the best from their bassist especially in the track’s intro; there’s also a theatrical vibe in this song as well. The lead guitars wailing and the strong bass together is a nice change; it feels different but refreshing while the band are still being themselves.
“The Feast of Echoes” starts off in an epic doom style and as the track progresses, it gets more aggressive, faster and heavier. I really like this song a lot as again it shows off how Fer de Lance variate and transition between styles really well. Continuing the doomier half of the album, “Children of the Sea and Sky” gives off big triumphant feels with this song. It also sounds very larger than life in a way that makes for one of my favorite tracks on this album. Fires on the Mountainside closes off in an interesting fashion with “Tempest Steel,” an interesting mix of folk and epic heavy that makes for a glorious way to end what has been a very interesting album.
Fer de Lance did a very good job here in stepping up even further after a cool debut. They took advantage of their potential and made a follow-up that has improvements learned from the debut. The mixture of epic doom, heavy and folk on this one can be difficult to land but the band have been able to blend these very well together without any conflicts; it feels like the band has more of their own unique personality on this one as well. While it’s hard to say that I like this more than some of this year’s traditional metal releases I mentioned earlier, Fer de Lance further proves and represents with this valiant effort why 2025 seems to be ridiculously strong in this area.
4/5 Flaming Toilets ov Hell
Fires on the Mountainside is out today through Cruz del Sur.
