UMUR
"The Plague of a Coming Age" is the 4th full-length studio album by Finnish black metal act October Falls. The album was released through Debemur Morti Productions in March 2013. October Falls was formed in 2001 and their early releases were dark acoustic neofolk, but from the "The Streams of the End (2007)" EP going forward, the band have incorporated black metal elements to their sound.
The music style on "The Plague of a Coming Age" is epic sounding atmospheric black metal with acoustic interludes thrown in. The band are well playing and the sound production is clear and powerful. The songwriting is pretty strong too, but it can be argued that there isn´t enough variation between tracks, which makes it a bit hard to distinguish between the various tracks. Most tracks feature more or less the same mid-paced stoic drum beat, raspy black metal type vocals and epic lead guitar themes. The tracks are atmospheric in nature and seldom offer up anything aggressive despite this being black metal. Melancholy is high on the list of emotions expressed here.
While I do feel that "The Plague of a Coming Age" is slightly one-dimensional in nature, it´s still arguably a quality release and if you´re hooked on this type of atmospheric, melancholic and epic sounding black metal, I´m sure you can look past the fact that not all tracks stand out from each other and as a consequence of that the flow of the album isn´t as dynamic as it could have been. A 3 - 3.5 star (65%) rating is warranted.