The album starts with the first track “takeover” which reminds me  to the glorious “The Great Cold Distance” time.

A soft vocal upon an aggressive drum and guitar, which become sweeter with the keyboards in the chorus, to let the listener dream but never forget this is an hungry and autocommiseration song. The instruments are wonderfully mixed to create a rainbow of emotions through along the song.

Second track “Serein” starts with an anxiety’s sound keyboard, that will warn the listener for the whole song, the quick changes of rythm, make the listener take a breathe from the sadness drowning experience created by the always present guitar, and take a break. A very equilibrated song.

Third track “Old heart falls” which reminds the title of the album, seems to be a discussion with the inner self, (as the official video shows, the man writes his story on the paper and these are the lyrics of the song) The song pushes you through and “up and down” feeling, through autoblame, sadness, and the hope denied that explodes with a crescendo in the chorus. The right backbone for this album.

Fourth track “Decima”, it’s a poetic ballad, about lost love, a beautiful breakdown from the previous  harder tracks. A very chilling melody, that gives you time to think about  the road that the album could take. The instruments make a perfect river flow for  Jonas’s voice.

Fifth track “Sanction “, the aggressive sounds strike back, with a symphonic keyboard’s open, that will be less louder but omnipresent, drum and guitars are very hard. The structure of the song, is always quite the same, but it never tiers the listener up.

Sixth track “Residual” another  ballad, but a little faster, where the guitars rule upon the same drum base. At some point of the song, keyboard and bass guitar awaken another aspect of the song, which you may  couldn’t expect in the first half. Nothing special  but a well “circle” song who links perfectly the start with the final.

Seventh track “Serac” it starts with a familiar Tool’s sound ( the song “Reflection”) but the dobule bass drum and the guitar open totally another kind of song through dreamin’ keyboards to remind the “Katatonia trademark” and some Death Metal guitars. A song composed with different styles and really well made. 

Eighth Track “The Last Song before the Fade” starts with  perpetuals guitar and keyboards, that fulfills the sound, which is broken by the drum patterns which allows the vocals to reach directly the listener’s heart. The calm before the storm.

Ninth Track “Shifts”: ‘Driven by its gentle, lush and shimmering rendition of melancholy it would take you for a waltz daydreaming of the past, longing for the happiest times of your life’. This is the description in the official video. What can explain better the feelings and the beauty of this song than the words pronounced by its makers?! This song is repetitive and absolutely touching and beautiful at the same time. Keyboards sound like a “Carrion” to lead you through toughts. Pure magic.

Tenth track  “The Night Subscriber”  it starts through a “spiky and strong” drum’s ryhtm; guitars and bass guitar make a bridge to reach the calm and chilling keyboard part, to go again through a very hard and strong sound shotted in your face

Eleventh track “Pale Flag” here we go with another slow ballad (which you’d be glad to hear  near  a warm fire) to balance the previous song. This sounds like acoustic and like Jonas  is a story-teller more than a singer, in fact the backvocals here are very important and you can hear well their presence to efforts the first. Here we can really feel we are going to the end of the album.

Twelveth Track “Passer”: Last song of the album is (as we learnt for the big part of the album) constructed through hard riff and a thick drum sound, the keyboard echoes in the background of this song and sometimes reappears to complete the paint in its beauty. A  very nice ending for the album.

“The Fall Of The Hearts”, it’s an unexpected wonderful result from Katatonia. I’ve honestly lost hope they could pick back the “TGCD” atmosphere, but they did and they made it less raw and more elaborated.

If you have some bad moment in your life, you can easily count on this album to cheers you up, because this piece of art, can heal your wounds  with no pain.

I suggest all to try at least once to listen to this Masterpiece;  It can be a very sweet and tasteful surprise.