Blame me liking Khors album well enough that I went on a binge looking for more truly melodic and atmospheric black metal, trying at the same time to avoid low-fi bedroom anguish variety. That is how I ran into October Falls, where that one-man creation, but now coupled with an actual ability, produces magnificent results. To be honest what I was hunting was Mikko Lehto’s latest long-player work The Womb of Primordial Nature, but as my favorite online CD spot was all out, I grabbed a shorter preceding EP The Streams of the End instead.

The research is indicating that with this EP Mikko (and the cohort of musicians he recruited to play on The Streams of the End) has taken a turn away from his previous darkwave/folky acoustic tendencies and gained a new, much harsher, both blacker and bleaker, musical prospective. The closing title track is what apparently October Falls was more about in the past, the quiet acoustic guitar/flute interplay. Remaining true to the origins, every song on the EP does begin, or at least incorporates, acoustic styling, but it is plain obvious that Ulver’s Bergtatt in Mikko met early Thy Serpent, Behemoth and mid-era Moonsorrow along the way. The melodies on The Streams of the End are mostly tremoloed and sometimes they do meander a bit, but they are incredibly powerful, being at the same time both gloriously suffering and relaxingly pacifying. Slower, pain-filled White Northern Soils even briefly takes on a funeral doom element before climaxing with a killer harmonized solo.

The vocals on The Streams of the End are barely audible, almost non-existent, completely subservient to the flow of music, creating a sense of an individual who either totally succumbed to his inner torment or about to break away from the darker side since the bottom has been already hit. The setting for this forlorn tragedy is those snowy fields and forests of Scandinavia, October Falls having the classic Finnish sense of sorrow, so well spelled out before them by Swallow the Sun, Haive and countless others.

If you feel heavy pensive thoughts crowding your senses of late and feel that the gloomy pathway is more fitting than some aggressive riff blasting, give October Falls a chance. And if I get my hands on The Womb of Primordial Nature I will be sure to share my thoughts as well.