Peaceville – 3rd July 2026
Christopher Nosnibor
Sometimes, you just need some metal, and the heavier and more extreme the better. This is something I only realised quite some way into adulthood. Perhaps it’s – at least in part – because the only metal I was exposed to as a youth in the 80s was chart or otherwise popular stuff like Iron Maiden, which struck me as corny and excessively widdly. It wasn’t until I started listening to John Peel in the 90s that I heard anything really fucking brutal, and grindcore proved to be a gateway of sorts. But even after that, so much metal felt a bit tame and rather like it was trying to hard to be menacing. It’s only through further exposure in my capacity as a reviewer that I’ve come to appreciate the myriad shades of metal and its cathartic qualities, particularly in a live setting.
I can immerse myself in ambience as a means of escape as happily as anyone, and often do. The tranquil, immersive experience is often soothing and transportative, even meditative and soporific. But there are times when a furious, guitar-driven blast of nihilism is what’s required. And with Mørketid, that’s precisely what Mortem deliver.
Although formed in 1989, amidst the most nascent bubblings of the swamp that would spawn the infamous Norwegian black metal scene, their first demo being produced by Euronymous and Dead of Mayhem, but they fizzled out fast, and it wasn’t until 2019 that they reconvened and recorded their debut album Ravnsvart. They could never be praised for striking while the iron’s hot, so to speak, but to toss another cliché, good things come to those who wait, and after nearly seven years of waiting, Mørketid has no weak spots whatsoever, with eight searing, lacerating sonic assaults that hit with an unrepentant fury.
It’s the six-minute title track that bursts in, all guns blazing, to announce the album’s arrival, after a dark ambient instrumental intro that makes way for thousand-miles-per-hour guitar and drums, rasping vocals and some rather playful but simultaneously sinister keyboard work. It’s quintessential black metal, but with a broader sonic vision and some tidier production. This is to the album’s benefit: there’s an abundance of vision on display, and it would be a shame to lose the detail to production that makes it sound like it was recorded from the next room on a 90s phone. That isn’t to say it’s overproduced – far from it. On Mørketid, everything is cranked up to eleven and it hits with all the force the music deserves.
The driving, dynamic ‘Skyggeånd’ is – in the main – slower in comparison to the majority of the album, and its seven-and-a-half-minute expanse is rich in atmosphere and strong on power, which makes for an album standout.
For the most part, Mørketid is simply relentless, double-pedal drumming and a blanket of overdriven chords provide a backdrop to vocals ripped from Satan’s very own larynx. It’s dark and it rages, hard. One could have readily forgiven and accepted an album of template-based black metal from Mortem given their back-story – but instead, Mørketid is an album that ventures forth in the most unexpected of directions. Sure, it’s black metal all the way, and that’s quire as it should be. But Mortem bring something more. And that more is the detail and compositional skills that make Mørketid a cut above.
AA
