For six months of the year, the days get shorter, the ambient temperature drops significantly, and leaves fall from the trees.  INDREN's album, "Of Time and Autumn Leaves," is a black metal concept album about the end of the autumn months and the beginning of winter. This time of year is often highlighted in black metal, and bands such as SAOR and WINTERFYLLETH have dealt extensively with this subject matter. Let's see how well the latest INDREN album measures up.

The first track, "Winds of Desolation" is a calm, melancholy instrumental that sets the stage for the album fairly well. My only issue with this song is a common one across this album. It's just too long. Don't get me wrong, I love when a song takes its time developing, where each passage is allowed to breathe, and the song takes the listener on a journey. In the case of this song, passages are repeated well after the tone of the album has been established.

The introductory song is followed by "Of Time." This one quickly bares its teeth with tremolo picking over blast beats, letting the listener know that they have entered black metal territory. Raw, raspy vocals soon enter the fray, invoking the indifference of time itself. At two minutes and thirty seconds, the music slows down and the vocals are delivered at a medium tempo. This song is competently presented, but nothing really stands out as exceptional. There are several repeated elements that would have been better represented without redundancy, making this cut about two minutes too long.

Next up, is "Autumn Leaves." This piece gets off to a slower start than the previous track. This slower passage is short-lived as raspy vocals, tremolo riffs, and blast beats take over. From then on, it's standard black metal fare. A very nice riff comes in at around a minute and a half, successfully driving the song forward. Due to excessive repetition of previously established ideas, I found myself easily getting distracted throughout most of the song. At three minutes and fifty seconds in, there is some excellent clean singing, but that bit was too little, too late for me.

The album's apex is track five, "Nebbie." This one starts off slowly and meanders for the first two minutes before the music abruptly changes. There is a brief uptick in the song's intensity. Unfortunately, that section quickly wears thin. From the three to four-minute mark, some excellent clean vocals are on display. Shortly thereafter, a welcome thrash-inspired solo comes through, nearly compensating for so many drawn-out segments. That solo and the song are then capped off nicely with a brief burst of black metal fury.

At times, "Of Time and Autumn Leaves" rises to mere competent status. The instrumentation is properly executed, but most of its passages linger for entirely too long for my tastes. INDREN can definitely stand to be more judicious with their songwriting. Given the subject matter, I understand that this is a somewhat meditative album, but each and every song felt twice as long as it should have been.