Borknagar has been kind of hit and miss with me for the past couple of albums. I loved Winter Thrice but could not really get into True North. If you are not familiar with them, Borknagar has black and Viking metal roots, but dabbles in folk and progressive metal emphasizing melody, hooks and general epicness. These elements are coupled with alternating black metal rasps and soaring operatic vocals. I don’t think anyone sound quite like Borknagar, but the closest comparisons would probably be Vintersorg and Arcturus, and there are definitely traces of Enslaved, Emperor and bands like Ereb Altor.

On first listen Fall instantly struck me as sharper than its predecessor. Opener "Summits," contains every trick in Borknagar’s repertoire including harsh rasps, clean and catchy vocal lines, blastbeats and slower melodic guitar parts and an epic ending. Songs like "Afar," "Moon," "Stars Ablaze" and "Northward" successfully follow this blueprint with the standout tracks being the latter two. "Northward" in particular, builds momentum quickly, delivering an effective triple combo of black metal blasts, rasping vocals and brilliant guitar work, before shifting into an anthemic pre-chorus where harsh and clean vocals alternate in their usual fashion. To my ears, this song showcases Borknagar at their very best, highlighting their unique versatility and creativity.

There are a couple of fillers here such as "Nordic Anthem," "The Wild Lingers" and "Unraveling" which are just uninteresting and pretty dull. But despite this, Fall flows quite nicely and has admittedly spent a lot of time in my daily rotation. When they nail it, it is so easy to be swept along in the never-ending stream of hooks whether it is by singalongable vocal lines, or by riffs and tasty guitar licks found throughout the album. Despite these softer characteristics and the very polished production, Fall is still quite heavy on faster, more aggressive sections. It is the ability to uniquely combine these elements so smoothly that is Borknagar’s key strength, and it ends up making this an enjoyable album despite its flaws.