Shoegaze wasn’t something I ever really got into - before this last year I probably wouldn’t have been able to name a band that is actually classified as shoegaze. I still don’t have a strong shoegaze knowledge, but I’ve started diving into it a lot more recently as I’ve realized many of the bands I’m putting on repeat right now are working from a love of shoegaze.
One recent band in this vein is Holy Fawn. Their 2018 full length, Death Spells, mixes shoegaze, post-rock, doom, and black metal to a wonderful effect. It moves seamlessly between softer, more atmospheric moments, dreamy guitars with big reverberating vocals, and doomed riffs, tremolo picking, and screaming.
If you’re a regular listener to the podcast, you’ve heard me talk a lot about the importance of dynamic range, and how it can create tension and release through moments of rest. Death Spells doesn’t have a lot of dynamic range, but Holy Fawn does use tone in a way that’s very similar. The band will use the moments that are more dreamy and atmospheric, with softly strummed and picked guitar melodies, to make the heavy, distorted chords and massive drums sound considerably heavier.
Songs like “Drag Me into the Woods” show this wide range; the beginning almost sounds like it could be an ambient piece from Amulets, before going into a dreamy strumming backed up by huge drums. After a return to the sort of ambient textures of the early song, it breaks away to big heavy guitars, heavy drums, and screams that are buried in the mix like a textural element more than highly present vocal delivery.
“Yawning,” one of my favorite tracks on the album, also shows this blend of influences and tone. The melody of the opening guitar sticks with me and I find myself humming it over and over. The song blends from this driving riff with vocals that almost remind me of Sigur Ros, to big heavy chords, slamming drums, and high pitched screams, backed up by tremolo picking that is reminiscent of the opening melody.
Another great example of their use of tone and atmosphere to create tension and range is in the middle of the album, when after the heavy final moments of “Seer” we drop into “Two Waves,” a fully ambient track that creates rest and relief to take us into the back half of the album. This track allows the listener to reset and ground themselves for the soft opening moments of “Take Me with You.”
I’d like to briefly also talk about Holy Fawn’s three track 2020 EP, The Black Moon, which is how I became aware of the band. In just three tracks, Holy Fawn demonstrates the attention to tension found in Death Spells. It’s heavy, it’s ambient, it’s atmospheric, and arguably a stronger release than Death Spells despite its length. It’s a fantastic EP, and I’ve probably listened to it a hundred times since I found it.
There are, of course, a lot of bands making heavy music that is inspired by shoegaze. Alcest melded shoegaze with black metal and created a sound that would inspire a huge number of bands like Deafheaven, Amenra, and Harakiri for the Sky, to name a few. King Woman pulls together shoegaze and doom to create a unique and heavy sound that sets them apart from others in the doom world. What makes Holy Fawn special to me is their ability to take all of these sounds (doom, black metal, shoegaze, post-rock) and pull them into one consistent and coherent idea that I haven’t heard anyone else do.