Fall of Messiah – Green Lands
Release Date: 24th April 2026
Label: Voice Of The Unheard Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Post-Rock, Post-Hardcore, Screamo.
FFO: Envy, Caspian, Pianos Become The Teeth, State Faults, If These Trees Could Talk, Thrice, pg.lost.
Review By: Pete Wall
A whole hell of a lot can happen in twenty years; life comes at us fast, and before we know it we’re looking back at what a moment ago felt like it would last forever. The release of their fifth studio album Green Lands marks two full decades of creative collaboration for French post-rock lumineries Fall of Messiah and the record finds them contemplating the value of the present moment and the unknowable nature of whatever is to come. It’s also an album that, as its title would suggest, sees the band looking toward the natural world in a time when artifice and the compulsion to be in constant motion have left many bereft of peace.
Green Lands closes the loop on the loose ten-year trilogy of releases that began with Empty Colours (2016) and continued with Senicarne (2020). Since then, the band have faced considerable obstacles with COVID disruption, label changes, significant personal struggles, and a major line-up shift that saw founding guitarist Matthieu Raoult depart in 2023, with the band becoming a foursome prior to the recording of this latest project. The tumultuous passage from the last record to this would be enough to break a lot of bands, but instead it has led to Fall of Messiah reemerging in their most mature and reflective form.
Green Lands takes us on a contemplative journey from explosive opener Tour de Garde to uplifting penultimate track Tour de Force; a journey which moves from guarded and resistant to expressive and open. The denouement is a track entitled A Joy of Lesser Means, which perfectly captures what drummer and vocalist Pierre Bailleul describes as ‘refocusing on what’s important’, in his case a move to a more rural setting and a reconnection with the neighbouring forest as well as pouring time into family, friends, and creativity.
This is an album redolent with the surroundings from which it came. The production is lush and spacious; the arrangements are given room to breathe; and the whole project has an organic quality that makes it feel more personal and relatable than some of the more chin-strokey bands in the genre. And within all the beauty and exploration there are deep wells of pain and frustration. Screamed vocals are more prevalent than on previous releases, yet still feel carefully placed rather than overused. It feels like a cliché to say that a post-rock record needs to be experienced as a whole, but this is undoubtedly the case here.
Will Green Lands get lost in the midst of an increasingly dense forest of post-rock records? Maybe. But for those that find this gem, the rewards are plentiful.
(4 / 5)
