Review by Michael on August 3, 2026.

If you are into symphonic black metal, 2026 is quite a good year for you so far. After great releases by Worm and Stormkeep (both from the USA) now follows the European answer to that. "Mørketid" is the second full-length by Norwegian Mortem and if you are a connoisseur of the scene you might know that the band isn't as new as you might know, and If you take a look at the line-up, you'll quickly realize it's essentially a who's who of the underground scene.

Does this read like some sort of appetizer? Fine, then let's come to the music. Although I didn't want to go into detail about the past background of the band members it seems to be fair to mention Arcturus. Three of the quintet were or still are involved into the pioneers of avant-garde black metal and so this is a good reference to describe the musical path Mortem has chosen.

Opening with the title track, you can instantly fall in love with these eerie, slightly spooky melodies underlined with a lot of synthesizer sounds. This is what Arcturus did on their debut album "Aspera Hiems Sinfonia" back in 1996 only that the sound has much more pressure here. The bass is clearly noticeable as well (which is quite often not the case) and sometimes sounds slightly doomy, almost Geer Butler-like. The vocals are pretty harsh, enriched with a lot of poison and anger and vocalist Marius Vold sounds as if he would like to spit into your face. His performance on "The Mighty Odious" is quite remarkable. Here he sounds like a ghoul from some horror movie like "The Descent".

Fortunately the guys don't drift into any slower tunes on "Mørketid" but keep the pace between some atmospheric mid-tempo and some faster outbursts in between. And still they manage it quite well to keep up that creepy atmosphere during the album. In some parts, they might have shortened the songs a little bit ("Skyggeånd" has some lengths in the middle section and with about 8 minutes also the longest one on the album) but nevertheless the album is an impressive melodic black metal release.

In some cases you even can find some references to their death metal roots, such as "Aftermath" or "Blodvassen Grun". Here the guitars are tuned down and the riffing is a little bit more brutal. But these are just some nuances you might not notice if you don't listen closely to it.

"Den Sanne Gud" may be the most unusual track. That one is almost danceable, peppered with a lot of what would have been modern in the 2000s. I won't say that it reminds me a little bit of Rammstein but for sure you can hear some EBM influences. Really a strange but not bad one.

As already mentioned, the production is really good. It sounds dynamic, warm and powerful. Also the artwork has turned out quite lovely. Kept in some middle-ages style, you can see some paintings about the Devil and his temptations. Only one thing is unclear – what is the winged-dog with the Devil's tail in the booklet doing? Flying? Sitting? Or is it preparing to poo the priest on his head?

Rating: 8.5 out of 10 ravendogs