Fell Omen – Caelid Dog Summer
Release Date: 15th August 2025
Label: True Cult Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Black Metal, Heavy Metal, Punk.
FFO: Venom, Whiskey Ritual, I Am the Intimidator, Hands of Goro, Attacker, Discharge, early Bathory, very early Sodom, Accept, Dart, Auriferous Flame, Estuarine.
Review By: Malte Brigge
Fell Omen already released a 2025 album, February’s Invaded by a Dark Spirit—if it’s even an album, barely reaching 20 minutes. The trick…actually, gimmick… is that it sounds like a worn-out cassette you found in a box of your dad’s stuff in a damp basement corner. Not everyone appreciated the idea, but it charmed me, so when I saw the sequel — or, really, side 2 — in the promo bin, I swiped it. Spider of Pnyx, aka Gilded Panoply, a contributor to fellow Grecian black metallers Spectral Lore and Mystras, writes, produces and plays all of Fell Omen. He doesn’t take himself too seriously but treats the craft and tongue-in-cheek art of his production strangely carefully. Can Caelid Dog Summer open the hearts of calloused reviewers, or is Fell Omen determined to make them suffer?
The promo material warns, “After careful consideration, I decided to ignore the people hating on the old tape sound and I just made it worse by introducing a lot of flangers and phasers.” Caelid Dog Summer feels like a band in 1982 bought a 4-track with a bundle of discount pedals through which to channel heavy metal riffs and a sharp twin-axe attack. To capture the sound of a budget, the bass has only the most occasional presence; the guitars are mixed unevenly from song to song; the vocals are sometimes more background than lead and have only a couple of shrieks to play with; acoustic and programmed drums have a bootleg personality, missing the beat here and there, occasionally pulling a Bathory by slipping the rhythm. The toms reverberate loudly, and the cymbals are too far away from any microphone. The snare tone is inconsistent, as if the drummer doesn’t care to tune the head and weeks of pounding warp it from satisfying snap to trashcan lid pong to detuned plop. It’s cute and charming and will definitely irritate more than a few listeners.
While I appreciate the aesthetic, I enjoy Caelid Dog Summer for its straight-up rock ‘n’ roll. Starscourge Phase One & Phase Two kicks off with kick-ass riffs underscoring EVH solos and Priestly duelling for a glorious minute. It makes me wanna fire up the Dodge Charger and go speeding down any highway. Northern Lights Bomb (a tribute to Akira Hokuta) rips early Suicidal Tendencies licks backed by flangered blackened shrieks, over-chorused drum fills and a hurdy-gurdy solo. After 40 seconds (in a two-minute song) of doomy, ship-harbor thunderstorm atmospherics, The Horrors Persist But So Does Steel bounces gang-vocals frenetically off damp underground walls while you reach for your best d20 to drop crits on fools. Born to Siege, vicious and scorched and oily à la Motorhead, wants to tear your head off and eat your entrails. Poise on Rune saws through fast riffs, punk backup singers and big war drums. The title track brings flashbacks to that time you were a werewolf in a graveyard with a Benedictine choir, but is effectively a two-minute interlude on a 29-minute album setting up the final attack, The Fire Is Still Warm, with its big-ass riff and fuzzy saxophone solo leaning hard into epic doom. You can smell the mold on the stone and be certain there’s a gelatinous cube around here somewhere.
Caelid Dog Summer’s riff-o-rama is catchy even as it weirdly slips by. Many’s the listen where I heard the first and last tracks without noticing twenty minutes of different songs between — it blends into one unbroken track, despite each song having its own atmospheric intro. Spider of Pnyx can fucking play, but particular moments don’t always distinguish themselves from each other. It’s a fun album to listen to, but somehow not the most memorable.
Fell Omen knows there is no need to do this. No one asked for it. And yet, like I Am the Intimidator’s NASCAR metal, it’s something I didn’t know I wanted until I had it. It pays homage to a time of intense inventiveness and the equipment that built the sounds we love. It might be a gimmick, but it’s painstakingly and lovingly executed, with the chops to back it up. Caelid Dog Summer sounds like a band in the drummer’s parents’ garage looking for limits to push. Yes, those limits have long disappeared, so this album is a bit like a Peewee League field inside Dodger Stadium, but it’s still a good batch of ass-whoopin’ black ‘n’ roll. I know a lot of people won’t put up with the way it is crafted, but I’m listening and keen to see what’s next.
(3 / 5)
