Borknagar - Fall (2024)^{Release ID: 50338}

Borknagar continue to produce solid quality progressive metal after a nearly three decade career. Their brand of folk/melodic black metal has a very comforting warmness to it, despite the obvious winter themes over the bands last couple of records. For some reason, I feel like Fall is a heavier record than True North with more of Lars A. Nedland and ISC Vortex's harsh black metal screeches and black metal blast beats from Bjørn. Production is still very good; it has a distinct Century Media sound as the melodic passages, both in the instrumentals and the clean singing, have more of a gothic texture to them. The light touches of a warm synth/string arrangement beneath the bands metal sound is executed well and it never feels like these tones are taking over the mixing.

It all comes together in what should be a knock-out-of-the-park home run for Borknagar, but given the bands long history, it's hard to view Fall as anything more than decent. You certainly cannot go wrong with starting off with Fall as your first Borknagar album, but this is a well oiled machine at this point just going through the motions. It still feels like its being written with passion though, so I'm willing to continue giving them a free pass.

Best Songs: Summits, Moon, Unraveling, The Wind Lingers