Sweden's Total Holocaust is known as one of thee premier European black metal labels, with albums from such blackened artists as Stalaggh, Hypothermia, Blodulv, Emit, Dodfodd, Lutomysl, Xasthur, Nachtmystium, Heresi, Necrofrost, Gloria Diaboli, Vargr, Bergraven, and Aosoth under it's belt. Looking through the THR Sweden catalog, you'll get an earful of some of the blackest of the black, but also some very progressive minded bands on the roster too. Either way, you usually know what you are going to get from THR: fast, aggressive black metal and diseased hellish atmosphere out the wazoo. Except in this case; one of Total Holocaust's newest (2009) releases is the album Fading from a band called Crimson, and it's not black metal, or metal in any way, but rather an epic album of moody, folk-inflected autumnal chamber-rock that's closer to a mixture of Amber Asylum and the acoustic folk of Drudkh's Songs of Grief & Solitude.

You won't find any information included with the album on who is behind this project; likewise, there's nothing online regarding the band, and the Total Holocaust site provides zero details on the members or even where the band is from. Utterly shrouded in mystery, all we have is the music of Fading, a single epic song that stretches out for almost thirty minutes. The song is composed using a series of movements that begin with the sound of wind rushing through barren trees and a single acoustic guitar plucking out a simple somber melody, the notes floating over the slow sad strains of a cello, subtle ambient keys that almost sound like the soft chime of a Rhodes piano, and the occasional whump of kettledrums echoing through the still, chill air. The music moves ever so slowly, a lugubrious chamber folk dirge played beneath the corrupted violet light of a twilight sky, the spare melancholy melodies perfectly evoking the crimson sky-burn of harvest. As the song moves along, the melody sometimes changes shape slightly as it's joined by swells of celestial synth, or gorgeous strings, or the instruments fall away completely leaving us with just the sound of dead leaves and trees rustling in the wind while a deep roiling drone hums in the distance. When the band comes back in, it's with a completely different melody, and the music becomes darker with each new passage, more forbidding and doleful, until the very end when the guitars and strings and synths are washed away and we're returned again to evocative field recordings of wind and trees. Its gorgeous stuff, recommended to fans of Amber Asylum and the Cascadian drone-folk of the Glass Throat label (At The Head Of The Woods, Fearthainne, The Elemental Chrysalis).