A persistently interesting band, Borknagar’s continued evolution has been a joy to behold, resulting in a series of truly engaging and progressive outings. While black metal remains at the band’s core, it is used deftly, providing a counterpoint to the elegant progressive and emotive neo-folk passages that drive these pieces forward. Previous album, 2019’s True North, was widely lauded, including here at SonicAbuse, and yet Fall threatens to eclipse even that mighty effort, Borknagar offering an eight-track masterpiece of atmospheric and expansive music.
The album opens with the remarkable outpouring of Summits, a masterclass in dynamic and progressive extremity, where rasping vocals and frozen riffs do battle with calmer passages and the shimmering wonder of ICS Vortex’s clean vocals. Despite being a mere six-minutes in length, it is a song of infinite variation, setting a high bar for the album, and showcasing once again how much more effective extremity can be when tempered by more reflective passages. After such an opening, Borknagar further cement their progressive credentials by sidestepping into the atmospheric Nordic Anthem, which combines elements of Hans Zimmer (specifically his collaborations with Lisa Gerrard), latter-day Nine Inch Nails, and Ancient VVisdom. It’s a truly gorgeous song that summons unbidden images of far-flung landscapes to the listener’s mind, and it may just be one of the most evocative pieces the band has yet attempted. It’s worth noting, too, the truly stunning production, which captures the myriad elements of the music with both depth and clarity, without sacrificing the band’s earthen authenticity – it’s an essential component of what makes the album so very special.
The band head into darker territory with the harrowing Afar, which opens with blackened vocals and ferocious riffs. However, while it remains a heavier number, the band’s expansive ambition once more takes hold, with folk, heavy metal, and progressive elements entering the fray. It’s followed by Moon, a full-tilt rocker with folk melodies underpinning the central thrust, and some truly epic solos towards its conclusion. It brings the first half of this stunning album to an end on a high, the soaring melodies, vocal harmonies, and sporadic moments of calm destined to ensure the song lingers long in the memory.
With a short, rather lovely intro, Stars Ablaze finds Borknagar opening the second half of the album at their most elegiac. However, at nine-minutes in length, there’s plenty of space for the song to expand, and so it does, taking in tumultuous black metal, haunting neo-folk, and traditional prog, the band weaving the various elements together with unerring skill. It’s followed by the shorter, yet still schizophrenic Unraveling, another track with a penchant for unleashing blasts of icy black metal which, for all their ferocity, enhance rather than detract from the gorgeous melody at the track’s heart. Another track that draws as much from the work of film score composers as it does from the world of heavy metal, The Wild Lingers offers pastoral scenes and lead guitar work reminiscent of Joe Satriani at his most restrained. The result is a cinematic piece that sounds much like Opeth covering Genesis. It leaves the ten-minute epic, Northward to bring this most evocative of album to its end. This it does, as might be expected, in truly grandiose style as guitarists Oystein and Jostein offer up some of the album’s most elegant lead work. With a fluid arrangement and dense layers of vocals seeing the song to its haunting end, Northward is the vibrant, yet graceful conclusion this album so richly deserved.
Borknagar have done it again. The band’s rare ability to weave the exteme and the evocative into a beguiling whole has been demonstrated time and again over the course of eleven albums, with each record refining the formula just a little more, and the band now have it to a fine art. Deservedly popular, one of the most rewarding elements of Borknagar’s steady evolution is that each step has seen the band follow their muse, the audience following willingly, and Fall finds the band at the very pinnacle of their career. Worthy of standing shoulder to shoulder, not only with their peers in extreme music, but also in the progressive rock community, Borknagar are a very special act, and Fall might just be their most wondrous work to date. 9.5/10
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