Mörkt Moln - The Culling of a Great Flame (2019) / 83%

BURN IN HELL!

Mörkt Moln (dark clouds) from Gothenburg certainly don’t play melodic death metal and I’m relatively happy they don’t. The Swedish trio delves into proto black metal and inserts dynamic hardcore, goth and punk elements to their first wave black metal sound instead.

Inspired by both Amebix and Darkthrone (who were also influenced by Amebix in their own right), the eight songs record is a definite love letter to a time where metal and punk lines were blurred and where black metal was yet in its formative infancy. While I feel the lines are being quite blurry again nowadays with powerviolence, death metal and crust being thrown in a mixer together this is another type of affair.

Interlude: I’m a big snacks guy so this review was written while eating some carrot cake Oreos. While they were able to recreate the taste of a carrot cake, the white icing is a bit too sugary. It’s a welcome distraction from the normal black and white ones just like this band is a welcome change from your run of the mill Satanic black metal. The special Easter Oreo was a bit better though.

Back to our normal programming, their music is dark (see their name) and it’s composed of pretty mid-paced bangers with some longer tracks like opener “Air Burial”, the Conan themed “Cimmerian Heat” or the Mesopotamian historical eight minutes closer “Shar Kishati”. Their production is kept fairly natural and that’s certainly perfect for their sound. If you’re a fan of Darkthrone’s later efforts, it’s a similar approach. If you’re not, it’s time go hike in the Scandinavian forests and never come back! Mixing groovy, riff heavy black/punk with some doom metal (the end of that Conan song crushes) to great success, it reminds me of the hateful but tongue in cheek of The Cult is Alive but slowed down a notch. The vocals are raw, gravely and in a spot between harsh and clean, it fits their proto extreme metal vibe well. There’s also obvious black(er) moments such as “Corruptors of Youth” with its evil classic black metal church bell intro and heavy metal goodness such as the Lord of the Rings’ inspired “Dol Guldur”. It’s not technical music either, it’s even fairly loose and almost volontarily sloppy and that’s how I love it, to be honest.

All in all, Mörkt Moln are apt at mixing old school black metal with a DIY aesthetic and approach. They’re a less and more band but with a lot of ideas and big balls.

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