This Is No Fairytale is the fourth studio album by the Dutch symphonic black metal band Carach Angren. It was released on February 23, 2015 via Season of Mist. The witch's hand on the cover art of the album is actually the hand of Dennis "Seregor" Droomers' grandmother. The album is a modern interpretation of the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale with themes of domestic abuse, drug addiction, alcoholism, sexual child abuse, suicide, child abduction and cannibalism.

The other great thing about Carach Angren is the way that Ardek uses symphonics. It doesn't sound like he simply pulled orchestral loops off the internet, like a lot of similar bands do. He actually puts a lot of effort into creating dark orchestral compositions to complement the music and the tone of the album. This album here is the newest addition to their list, titled "This Is No Fairytale. An album that surrounds the classic story of Hansel and Gretel but with the band's own trademark twist. It's darker, more depressing and surrounds the topics of drug overdoses, suicides, cannibalism, murder and, of course, satanic witchcraft. Since "Corpses" was the best piece they've ever made, is this album a perfect followup or a step up? Well, no, With the previous album, I felt some sort of emotional connection to the piece.

Yet Carach Angren has a special something in its system which distances itself from such big-name acts of the same scene, and that is the concrete skill to actually tell a story. This is perhaps why the band's first three albums have gone down so well with the metal fan-base in general. 2015 sees the release of the oddly-titled This is no Fairytale, and if the amount of hype surrounding the album is anything to go by, then it will prove as a gateway to bigger things for Carach Angren. As with the band's previous three releases, lyrical imagery and a grandiose storytelling ethic are the most prominent aspects of the band's sound here. Better still, everything here seems much darker, and that's not just regarding the black hue of the album cover. Drugs, alcohol abuse, domestic assault-it's basically like The Jeremy Kyle Show.

which is out now on Season of Mist. One of the things I love about Carach Angren is how divisive they are amongst the staff at this site. For some, they’re LARP-Friendly black metal and for others they’re an enjoyable band. When it comes to a genre like symphonic black, I own up to it time and time again that I am, in large part, an idiot. This Is No Fairytale is probably the band’s most traditionally black metal disc next to their 2008 release Lammendam. On the group’s last two albums, Carach Angren wove a lot of symphonic work into their music, at times letting it overpower the band themselves.

CARACH ANGREN will be playing in support of their latest release 'Dance and Laugh amongst the Rotten'. This mature streak was taken a step further with the fourth full-length 'This Is No Fairytale', which is on the surface a darker variation of the "Hansel and Gretel" story from the Brothers Grimm collection, but also deals with the too real topic of child abuse in a dysfunctional family. With ‘Dance and Laugh amongst the Rotten’, CARACH ANGREN are returning to "pure" storytelling with episodes that are centered on a girl playing a little too long with her Ouija board.

Around the mid-point of the album, Carach Angren make a return to their classic formula with Dreaming Of A Nightmare In Eden. This little number has the distinct feeling of an interlude, and the line nibble nibble naw, is it a mouse nibbling at my little house? perfectly describes how the track opens. While This Is No Fairytale is consistently Carach Angren and it’s a good fit for their discography, I’d be much more inclined to return to Death Came Through A Phantom Ship and Where the Corpses Sink Forever before this one. The fairytale is packed to the hilt with horrific narration that has me excited to read the entirety of the story, but the lack of subtleties and reprieves from the hammering makes me inclined to push it backwards in my playlist.

Carach Angren - This Is No Fairytale(2015) Full Album. This Is No Fairytale(2015) Full Album.

This Is No Fairytale (2015) by Carach Angren. Labels: Season of Mist. Genres: Symphonic Black Metal Members: Namtar, Seregor, Ardek. Album (Studio full-length).