Where Everything Begins With An End is the fantastic 2015 debut album from one man band Faunus. A nature-inspired piece, it follows the concept of the four seasons over the course of its four tracks – with one track naturally devoted to each season – and it is both an inspiring and invigorating listen.
Although the style falls mainly under the post-black/doom/shoegaze umbrella, each of the four tracks are stylistically unique to one another and it means that they stand out in their own unique way whilst also blending together coherently well to form a unified listen as a whole, which is definitely testament to great songwriting.
Autumn – Death is a melancholic-feeling opener with hard-hitting fast sections that juxtapose well against the slower, more morose parts, and the soaring instrumentation (particularly in the latter half of the song) adds a lot of ambience and atmosphere to the track. Following this track is Winter – Gestation, which has a very bleak, harsh and ‘cold’ vibe in the earlier parts of the song, and this slowly evolves into a warmer, more rounded slow-paced sound as the song progresses.
Spring – Birth is a lot more energetic in comparsison, and there’s a lot more melody to the song, particularly in some of the guitar riffs, and it progresses well into the album closer Summer – Maturation, which brings the album full circle. It carries on with the more melodic approach that Spring had, whilst also being somewhat melancholic in its slightly slower musical style, and it brings the listener nicely back to Autumn – this is an album that’s in a perfect circle and it flows in such a way that you can easily just loop back to the opening track and start again – just like the seasons in real life.
All in all, a very engaging and interesting listen – made all the more impressive when you consider this is the work of one person!
9/10
