Borknagar - Fall (Album Deep Dive)
So, I've only heard six songs by Borknagar thus far, but when I saw a Loudwire article about upcoming metal album releases and their name was on there, I knew I want to do a Deep Dive about it when it drops, even if I didn't have time to listen to their older albums before that. And it dropped yesterday, Feb 23rd, 2024.
Most of the songs are on this album, actually... I've heard Havoc, Moon, Nordic Anthem, Summits, Voices and The Wild Lingers. Four out of six are on this album, Voices and Havoc are not. There's also music videos of some of the songs, so I'm gonna be checking those out as well, since I don't think I have yet.
Album cover is a waterfall. Looks like an oil painting, but it could be a digital art piece made to look like an oil painting. Beautiful, nevertheless.
(Something I noticed later: The sky on the horizon of the album cover is the same red as in Edvard Munch's painting, Skrik, which is referenced in one of the music videos. The band's logo and album name are in positions they often are in anyway in album covers, but their positions can also be interpreted as such: the band is near the top of the summit, but hasn't quite reached it yet, and the album name FALL is very low on the image, like it had fallen. One song also talks about a sky that looks like an artist painted it, so the oil painting-y look of the album cover might be a nod to that.)
Album is about 54,5 minutes long, but only has eight songs. Song lengths vary between 4:33 and 9:54.
Here's some facts, in case someone hasn't heard of them (my source is their Spotify page): They're a Norwegian progressive metal band whose music also has elements from folk metal and black metal. They have 72 808 monthly listeners on Spotify, most of whom are actually Finnish, not Norwegian, which is interesting. They're signed to Century Media. The band was formed in 1996 and has released "nearly a dozen" studio albums since. Their lyrics are "centered around themes such as philosophy, nature, mythology, paganism and the cosmos" - oh wow, it's like they're made for me! I love philosophy - I can't name who said what etc, but I love thinking and pondering things, etc. Very interesting stuff. Mythology and paganism interest me, I'm an agnostic myself, currently trying to find out what I believe in. Religious pondering has kinda been on the back burner lately, with all the shit going on in my life, but I'm open to get back into it. And the cosmos, I love the cosmos. Aesthetically, very much my thing, maybe about half or a third of the clothes and jewelry I use regularly have some kind of a space theme on them. I love learning space facts as well, space is fascinating.
I can see the prog, the black metal and the folk metal just by outside factors alone: The album cover is nature themed and artistic, which makes me think black metal (nature, paganism, etc) and prog metal (the artsy stuff). The band's logo alone would indicate either folk or power metal to me, fantasy vibes. The song lengths scream prog or doom metal, no one else does songs that are on average about 7min long. (I listened to a lot of pop last year and any time a song would be under 2,5min, I'd be like "...is this a song? Does it count as a song, like, really? It's so hecking short!" Some of them are under 2min long. Crazy 😂)
The band's lineup changes are a whole mess (which is to be expected of a band that's nearly 30 years old), I stole this graph from Wikipedia:
Current lineup consists of ICS Vortex on bass and vocals, Øystein G. Brun on guitar, Jostein Thomassen on guitar as well, Lazare on keyboards and vocals, and Bjørn Dugstad Rønnow on drums.
Summits
Epic beginning, sounds like it could play in a fantasy movie. I wonder which singer is screaming and which one is providing the clean vocals. They sound like two different people to me, and we can see from the lineup, that they have two singers. I want to see the lyrics for this, and all their stuff!
Found the lyrics online. To me, they seem to be about facing hardships in life, but persisting and carrying on. This is expressed through a metaphor of climbing up a steep cliff/summit. My favorite parts are probably the line "I seek out my solace, I shape my own life" and the ending lines "I embrace the hardships, I greet every test / For in the pursuit of these sights still unseen / I carry my history, bold and serene / I carry my history, bold and serene".
There's also a visualizer video.
It's video footage of a waterfall, where the edges of our vision are blurred and distorted. My vision is like that sometimes, if I'm having a severe panic attack or if I'm about to faint (I've only fainted two times in my life, but I come close to it pretty often, if I'm too dehydrated or my blood sugar's too low). Then we switch to a wintery forest scene, and the edges of our vision are covered in gray, like a watercolor or the water you've used in watercolor (all murky and gray). Then we see, that the waterfall is actually in the forest. At times, because of the effects used in the video, the water looks like a solid concrete wall. We keep seeing these visuals, changing perspectives time and time again. At one point, the visuals come to the screen in a circular motion, like a clock's handles or a ship's radar. We can see the top of the summit, with light shining above it. And then we're down again. In the second to last frame, it looks like we're on the top, looking down, but when the camera turns, there's another concrete wall. And in the last frame, we're in the bottom again.
When one faces hardships in their lives, they don't see things clearly. Everything's distorted and blurred, as if in murky waters, struggling to see the light or the goal clearly. Trying to climb up from where you are, feels like you're going against the stream, it'd be much easier to just give up and let the tide take you down, that's where life seems to naturally drag you... It feels like drowning. It feels like trying to climb up a steep rock wall, that's slippery from all the water. It keeps pushing you down again and again and when you fall, it really hurts. Occasionally it even feels like a solid concrete wall - you can't get a hold of it, you can't go through it and you just... Need to stay where you are, until the wall is gone. Until you can see your goal, the top of the summit, again. There's a saying in the Finnish language, "mennä läpi vaikka harmaan kiven", which translates to "go through it, even if it's grey stone". It describes the core nature of a Finnish person, we call it "sisu". No matter what life throws at you, you persist and you go through it. So, this song might be in English, by a Norwegian band, but it's still very Finnish. (There's more about sisu on Wikipedia, if you're interested.)
How we, at first, only see the waterfall, then just the forest, and then both, to me that possibly describes a moment of clarity in that person's life. Seeing more clearly how different things connect. Or, since the goal is to get to the top of the waterfall, it could also be that they considered giving up, that they'd rather get lost in the forest than try and climb up the waterfall.
The timeline of the video describes how we start climbing and fall back down, time and time again. Occasionally even glancing where the stream is taking us, if we should just give up and go that way, get lost in the fog and darkness.
The radar/clock could symbolize time passing, or how the goal (top of the summit) is on our radar, we're actually seeing it very clearly and it's very close!
Then, we think we've reached the top, but when we look away from the journey we've been through and face another wall again, we fall back down and need to start the climb all over again.
Nordic Anthem
There's the pagan/fantasy vibes again, in the intro. The lyrics, from what I can gather from the audio, are about "sisu", or a similar Norwegian concept, again. Very empowering. Didn't feel like 5min at all, that went by so fast!
Looking at the lyrics, they're about persistence, yes, but also about paganism and Norwegian's religious history. They had ~1000 of years of pagan religion (with vikings etc) before Christianity spread there. It's still a hot topic among Norwegian metal bands, who often oppose Christianity and prefer the original pagan religion of the country. Especially the black metal bands.
The music video has silhouettes of the band members across a peach colored background. There was a huge, cool drum there at times, I wonder what it's called. It's like a calm declaration of war, quiet resistance of sorts. "This is where we stand. Nothing will change our mind."
Afar
Interesting effect on the voice... He didn't sound like this in the first song. It's like... hollow? The second singer as well! It's not a singing technique thing, it's the mixing. It feels... cold, for some reason? Halfway, the singer had some Eastern influences there, similar to System of a Down (with their Armenian influence). I prefer the total darkness to this Eastern color (no offense)... It's a good song, but not as good as Summits or Nordic Anthem.
The lyrics talk about ice and snow, which matches the "cold" feeling I got from it.
The song seems to be about one's souls union and connection with nature. A poem of philosophical and pagan nature of sorts. My favorite lines are "I belong, forever, in solitude strong" and "In the cold distance where forever resides / I will blend with the essence that nature provides".
Moon
Very talented playing. Makes me wish I knew how to play any instrument, so I could comment on the talent more. Unfortunately, I only know singing. This is so calming ❤ All the different instruments doing their thing, being so complex, and yet it all works so well together. The composition of prog metal in general, just... how?? There's so many moving parts you need to consider, I do not understand how a human brain can come up with something like it...
Lyrically, the song's comparing the human experience and life to the Moon. How it's so clearly visible, yet you can't grab it. "I saw craters / I saw pain / What it project / I had in check / Now the wisdom of the moon: / You shine when you are shined upon". ❤
The video is a drawn animation which consists of abstract shapes that one can interpret in many ways throughout the video. I think the feminine character we see (with the long hair) is the Moon and the more masculine, bald character is the human protagonist. The human looks up at the Moon, trying to reach her. He climbs on top of the summit to reach her better, yet he never does. At one point we see two eyes and go between them, there's wavy shapes and a person is surfing. I think these represent brain waves, aka one's thoughts. But they're also regular, watery waves, and they're the Moon's hair. She controls the changing tides with her magnetic pull, and in a similar fashion, controls the protagonist's mind, his brain waves. Pulling him to her like she pulls the water.
There was also Edvard Munch's Skrik, or Huuto, as I know it (it's the same word, just translated from Norwegian to Finnish, both mean "a scream"). We talked about in school, I think in middle school / junior high, in art class. The painting symbolizes existential dread. Very metal, Mr. Munch, very metal indeed. And very fitting in this song, where the protagonist is quite literally going lunatic, loosing his mind over the Moon.
Stars Ablaze
Beginning sounds... spacious... it's not an echo, but there's something that makes it feel like there's a lot of room around the musicians... Like they're in space, but the sound travels as if it's on Earth... Near the end it kinda sounds like Wintersun's Starchild. Which is cool, I like that song. It's the blastbeats, the melody behind and the similar scream vocals. The melodies aren't similar, but it's the combination of these components that make them somewhat similar to me.
Another poem about one's connection to nature. How you navigate your path (and your life) using the stars and how you feel as a guide. And there's the pagan element, talking about absence of God: "We walk our paths, the maps in our blood / Fathers and sons, in the absence of God / The starlit sky, our undying guide / We march our stitches, our spirits abide". My favorite part is "Ever-shifting skies, like an artist’s brush / A masterpiece of light with each celestial rush". So beautiful ❤
Unraveling
Interesting juxtaposition, when they go back and forth between the faster, "happier" parts (well, more like... heroic and grand, and epic, than happy, but anyway... uplifting) and the slower, more melancholic parts. I wonder if the lyrics have something along those lines? That falsetto, though... Wow. He's an amazing vocalist. I'm very picky about men's falsettos, most of them annoy me, but this sounded great <3
Had to google a little bit to decipher these lyrics, but Sisyphus from the Greek mythology is one key element. He cheated Death and his punishment when he was caught was to roll a boulder up a steep hill and every time he'd almost reached the top, the boulder would roll back down and he'd have to restart the job. He's the symbol of the absurdity of existence. Absurdism is a philosophical theory that the universe is irrational and meaningless. One of the leading figures of absurdism was a French philosopher Albert Camus. He wrote an essay about Sisyphus, in French called Le Mythe de Sisyphe. Direct translation of the summary in Finnish Wikipedia: "In the essay Camus presents his absurd philosophy: the human being has been doomed/convicted to search meaning, unity/cohesion/integrity and clarity in vain in a world that is impossible to understand. After this Camus outlines several approaches to the absurd life."
And this is pretty much what the lyrics of this song are about as well. I don't know about Camus, I haven't heard of him since I was in high school, but at least in this song the solution to dealing with the absurdity and unpredictable nature of life is to embrace the chaos. Which is well presented in these lines, near the end of the song: "Hostages in absurdity's domain / Embrace the chaos, release the pain / Absurdism, the poet's creed / Where reason fades and wills succeed / Oh, thinker's spirit, never cease to inspire / Let's dance with chaos and never tire".
The Wild Lingers
This was on my Release Radar yesterday. Talented guitar playing. Wish I knew something about it.
This music is very calming again, I just get lost in it. <3 Mind goes blank and I just feel... content. (Regular readers of the blog know what I'm talking about - it's The Vibe. Most of Borknagar's songs are The Vibe. That's why I'm here.)
Another poem about connection one feels to nature. How it's so ancient and wise and we should listen to it. No favorite parts, per se, but it's a beautiful piece of art nevertheless.
Video has human silhouettes against a gloomy peach colored background, but instead of black, the silhouettes have images of nature on them. Which matches the song's lyricism.
Northward
A lot heavier than The Wild Lingers. Faster, and more screams. I don't think The Wild Lingers had any screams? This is nearly 10min long, I wonder if they're gonna slow it down? They have to do something to keep it interesting for 10min. And they're prog metal, I trust that they will.
Around 2nd minute, they did slow down. And then built it back up slowly. Amazing melodies, I can see these vocal melodies playing in my head later.
Wtf was that sudden drum solo on the 3rd minute :D I loved that. My brain went "???" Haha.
Around 4,5min we're back in full speed and scream mode again. Guitar 'solo' on 5th minute.
Melodic music and screams follow that, and around 6th minute we properly calm down again.
If they perform this live, I can see the 7th minute forward bit as a good sing-a-long moment. Very clear pronunciation, no screams. Would take quite a many listens to get this amount of lyrics to stick to one's head, though. For "trve cvlt" Borknagar fans only, lol.
I take the lyrics as a love poem to the Northern nature. And how he feels like it's his home. Apart from the mountains, I can relate. I do prefer the summer, though, and he prefers the winter "away from summer's damp embrace", but nevertheless. We're both from Northern Europe, and I'm from quite a Northern part of Finland as well. It's colder, there's more snow and less people. More room for thoughts when the world around you isn't so busy.
Overall, I can definitely see all the lyrical themes and all the metal subgenres represented here, that Spotify was talking about. This is amazing. Sonically, The Wild Lingers is my favorite, but lyrically, I'd have to say it's a tie between Moon and Summits. The entire album was awesome, these just speak to me most, personally. 10/10, this is a masterpiece. I wouldn't change a thing.
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