“A human life consists of so much, it’s really complicated. It’s rainy days, it’s sunny days, it’s sad days, it’s love and hate; all these facets of life is something I want to bring into each and every song,” posits Øystein G. Brun of BORKNAGAR, who’s feeling even more philosophical than usual when discussing their 12th studio album, Fall, whilst burrowed in his studio late in the night like a badger in the wild. “Sure, people can drink some beer, hang around with buddies and listen to the music in the background, but I also want to make music that has depth, if you want to sit down with headphones, read the lyrics, and just fly away.”
That Fall is fit to bursting with moments made for both listening experiences is testament to BORKNAGAR’s evolution from a primal supergroup pounding the pavements of Bergen to progressive explorers, plotting expeditions through the unforgiving, beautiful mountains of Galdhøpiggen and Snøhetta. Stars Ablaze breathes black flames in the form of rebounding blast beats and stabbing dissonance, whilst Nordic Anthem drifts off into nomadic folk, with choral chanting and tribal percussion, whilst Afar goes for broke, beautifully blending the darkness of BATHORY with the light of DREAM THEATER. For Brun, it’s not about colouring outside the lines of convention just to be different, it’s about the honesty of human connection.
“In order to connect with people around the globe, you need to have some human honesty in the music. I need to be me,” he says, always calculating his thoughts like a grandmaster choosing his next move. “I don’t want to force anything, I don’t want to try to be something I’m not. I’ve never used corpse paint, I’ve always used my own name, and even the band name has no literal meaning.”
To write Fall, Brun had to remember the reason BORKNAGAR exists. Since their formation in 1995, it’s always been their mission “to make some kind of musical bubble that’s independent of everything that is commercial and constructed”. And that mission isn’t a shallow attempt to stand out, it’s born from Brun’s education as a psychiatrist.
“Music is first and foremost about a communication or a connection with human beings on a very personal level, and that’s the backbone of my idea that I need to do music that is real, that somehow mirrors maybe not my life, but being a human being,” he explains, reducing nearly eight billion humans to a single-minded audience to conduct music for. “Even though we live in different countries, we believe in different religions, but there’s also something very common about just being a human being; we all have a grandmother, we all have a father and a mother, we all came from the same place and that kind of scope is where I want to target my music, this very personal dialogue from a human being to another human being.”
Fall is a vehicle for human communication. It is first a conversation between its composers – Brun, joined by bassist and vocalist ICS Vortex, drummer Bjørn Dugstad Rønnow, guitarist Jostein Thomassen, and keyboardist and vocalist Lars A. Nedland – and secondly between them and the listener. A meditation, both musically and lyrically, on humanity’s struggle with, and survival through nature, Fall challenges your perception of the world around you and your place within it. BORKNAGAR give you the pieces, but its your puzzle to fit together.
“Fall has different layers. The most obvious one, if you look at the cover, is its a waterfall, and we all know that falling water is one of the most destructive forces in nature, and will eventually grind every rock and every mountain down to sand; that’s one perspective,” he says, pausing to let the gravity of that settle in before landing more blows. “The other perspective is the fall of man, that’s a very dark one of course, and the third perspective might be the change of season, and change in general is something that we people fear a little bit. If there’s something new, people tend to get stressed, we like it to be as always.”
BORKNAGAR don’t make their albums easy listens. Like 2019’s True North before it, Fall is designed to challenge you every step of the way through its snowy peaks. They’re “leaving the door open for fans to interpret their own ideas, and extract whatever they want”. For Brun, music goes beyond one man’s agenda. “I firmly believe that music should be beyond and above politics, religion, whatever background you have. Music is a very universal phenomenon, it’s a language without words and has an incredible unifying force.”
Away from its lyrics, which leave you with enough food for thought to keep you full for weeks without having to hit the shops, Fall musically moves you through the changing seasons, showing both the beauty nature brings and the damage it can cause. From opener Summits birds-eye view of the mountains below to the nearly-10 minute finale Northward, where you’ve reached the core of the mountain’s living world, it’s a journey.
“I always envision myself on a musical journey, each and every album is a part of that; there has to be dynamics, there has to be something that brings you up and brings you down and throws you around like a musical rollercoaster,” he explains, “I have this idea that music should have this human flavour of being alive. I want to make music complicated, and textural, that feels like a trip to the forest. I have a trail behind my studio where I walk a couple days a week to relax and each time is a new experience even though I’ve walked that path so many times since my childhood, it’s a different scenario with different birds singing, or different weather, and that’s the quality, that perfect human imperfection, into the music.”
Human imperfection might seem a ridiculous notion for a band like BORKNAGAR, where every album feels like a calculated move, like a series of movies years in the making. But that’s what it all boils down to. Fall is an emotional album to experience, and it starts with Brun’s relationship to music, to PINK FLOYD, and to his father. “When I listen to PINK FLOYD, it gives me something that nothing else in this world can give me. I lost my father seven years ago and after losing him, if I listen to PINK FLOYD, I basically start crying because it has such a strong impact on me, because I lost my father, and I miss him and associate music with him.”
It’s in that very human relationship with music that Brun believes Fall, and BORKNAGAR at large, exists in this world. It’s to find comfort in sound, and to move forward without forgetting the past. “Yeah it’s kind of sad, but it’s very empowering. I wanted to bring that from True North, which is quite a dark, quite a sharp album, but still it has this uplifting atmosphere, it energises and that same thing I wanted to bring into Fall.”
“Some of the thematics are dark, are brutal, are fatal, but still, it’s empowering and that kind of duality, in the brutal times we are living now with wars in Europe, with pandemics, with climate change we’re facing quite soon that has no way around, it’s a pretty dark future but there is still some spark to fight on and that’s a very human thing, to stand up and fight; we just try to survive and that’s the emotion I want to bring into our music, even though it’s dark, there’s a gleam of hope somewhere.”
Fall is out now via Century Media Records.
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