Album Review: Fawn Limbs - "Darwin Falls" 8.4 (Mathcore)

Written by Zax

Fawn Limbs – “Darwin Falls”
Avant-Garde Mathcore from the United States
Released on August 13th, 2021 through Roman Numeral Records and Wolves & Vibrancy Records
8.4/10

Interesting genre mashups are kind of my thing, so like, imagine my excitement jumping into a blackened mathcore album with dark ambient soundscapes, spoken word, and dark jazz??? Knowing that much, I was already invested in whatever this album had to throw at me, but nothing could’ve prepared me for the well of infinite darkness confined within the walls of this LP. If, after reading this review, if you decide to give this album a shot, you are in for a wild ride my friends.

https://fawnlimbs.bandcamp.com/album/darwin-falls

This record is horrifying, cacophonous, and avant-garde. It’s also a concept record; the concept expands on the stories from their last projects, with which I am not familiar at the time of writing this, but from what I was able to pick up, the story is equally fucked up.

When this album taps into its heavier sections, the result is nothing short of bleak, dissonant eardrum destruction. This relentlessly dark, mathy grindcore is hard to make sense of. The riffage is so dense and complex and the percussion issues an all out assault on the listener. Meanwhile these distorted window-shattering screeches materialize over it all. It’s really something to behold.

Somehow, it gets even more unsettling in the albums “lighter” moments. The thick dark ambient electronics are absolutely impenetrable and unnerving. Horns that sound almost menacing pierce the mix as well. The whole sound creates this overwhelming feeling of dread unlike anything else. I was skeptical about how well the spoken word would play out, but the dead-eyed, baritone delivery by the band’s drummer is spot on. His incredibly detailed passages had me holding on to every word, which is even more impressive given that, as I’ve already established, I had not a fucking clue what was going on in the context of the story.

This album is absolutely nuts. It’s not going to be for everybody, but if you’re into the niche, the thrilling, the strange… you’ll enjoy this. One hell of a listen.

8.4