Album #66: The Feral Trees – The Feral Trees

• Released: 2015
• Origin: Puławy, Poland
• Label: Antena Krzyku
• Best Track: Old Growth

Having enjoyed Lonker See yesterday, I thought I’d check out another band on the same label.

The Feral Trees – and I love their name for a start – are also from Poland, although singer Moriah Woods hails from Colorado, USA. The band brings together an unlikely combination of Southern folk and Eastern European sludge metal.

It works surprisingly well. Hearing a banjo being plucked away at over the top of slow-paced, heavy riffs on tracks like ‘The Desert’ is surreal, but somehow adds to an aura of desolation and gloom.

Like with Lonker See, the album becomes increasingly bleak and morbid as it goes on. The atmospheric ‘Take it to the Grave’, followed by the wonderfully gritty ‘Old Growth’, herald a change of direction as it nears the end, and closer ‘Dead Lies’ is as mournful as the title suggests.

Woods’ folky yet powerful vocals make all the difference on this record. Despite being at odds with the murky guitars, they somehow also complement them and give them a new dimension, all of which points towards pain and suffering. That description might put many off, but not me!