Band:	October Falls
Album:	A Fall Of An Epoch
Style:	Neofolk, Atmospheric black metal
Release date:	May 2020

01. A Fall Of An Epoch
02. The Endtimes Rising
03. The Ruins Of What Once Was
04. Hammering The Tide
05. The Flood Of Drought

If Mikko Lehto can expect us to wait for seven years between releases, then he and everyone else can expect to wait for three months before said release gets reviewed.

While the October Falls project initially started as an acoustic folk outlet, exploring the depths of sonic darkness without the accompanying extremity that has become the band's signature sound nowadays, it lacked personality and uniqueness in relation to its peers. The quality of songwriting was obvious despite its repetitive nature, and the content was designed exclusively to focus on the foreboding and morose atmosphere typified by such music. This is the foundation that continues to support the band, alongside the pillars of distorted harmonics that culminate in emotionally charged bursts of simultaneously calming and depressing music, making for an ironically gratifying experience. And while motif isn't a taboo structure within the metal scene, October Falls have taken the uncommon (if not unorthodox) approach of writing an entire album on the basis of a single riff, expanding on its potential with varying melodies and pacing (most of which lies somewhere in the middle range), deviating from that focal point only to grant momentary rest with brief acoustic breaks in the process.

A Fall of an Epoch, featuring perhaps the most overtly sobering and poignant material by Lehto and co. to date, is a crisply manufactured piece of work that spends almost the entirety of its ~50 minutes tugging at the strings of whatever inner turmoil you're dealing with, essentially utilizing what can only be described as a revisiting of the same central riff from the eponymous track throughout. At times the familiarity with the progression and anticipation of oncoming interludes can feel samey, but the evocative nature of the album immediately sweeps you back into the folds of melancholy, swathed in reluctance and pessimism that slowly bleed out over time. The single-note epic does its best to ensnare you in its lush atmospheric embrace, driving down in the listener a sense of apathy in forceful fashion, supported by Marko Tarvonen's appropriately simplistic rhythmic pounding behind the kit.

Of course, with the music being the primary draw here, Lehto's harrowing shrieks tend to get lost in the mix, but they're perfectly suited to the atmosphere and convey exactly how a personal war within yourself would sound if given the opportunity to be expressed in a recording studio. Not nearly as dramatically torturous as some vocalists, namely those in the depressive black metal scene, there's gravitas behind his words that grounds the entire project in a realism that eludes the majority who attempt to craft this kind of material, an exhibit in stoic maturity and seriousness befitting a band of this magnitude.