Review Summary: The lord of the night is back to haunt once again.
Kekht Arakh is a one-man Ukrainian band, with mastermind Crying Orc being the man behind the madness, and he has taken the black metal world by storm in recent years. His debut
Night & Love blended raw DSBM and romantic, vampyric lyricism and imagery giving off vibes of bands like Bethlehem, Shining, Judas Iscariot and super early Cradle of Filth. His second album, 2021's
Pale Swordsman, more-or-less continued the same style with serene keyboard work mixed with a depressive black metal sound, almost as if Dracula himself recorded the album as a love letter to his lost female companion. Now, five years later, Crying Orc is finally back with his newest album
Morning Star
This album shows him branching out into some different territory really for the first time in his career. The DSBM/atmospheric black metal base is still the core of his sound, but we get influences from soft folk music, ambient/drone and even a Bladee feature on the track ‘Eternal Martyr’. The album opens with ‘Wanderer’ and this track is part furious black metal banger equipped with Orc's downtrodden rasps and ice-cold tremolo picking and part devilish love song with Bergtatt-esque acoustics humming in the background the whole time. ‘Castle’ is a track that sounds like Darkthrone reciting a sick fairytale about the Sandman abducting children across the globe and sounds like a morbid folktale with whispering vocals. The next track, ‘Lament’, is almost like a DSBM track that tries to go melancholic post-punk with hypnotic doomy riffs, haunting croons and folky backdrops.
‘Genom Sorgen’ is where the Ukrainian folk influences really come into play. The entire track is accompanied by sorrowful acoustics and dejected cleans courtesy of ambient artist/producer VS-55. An accordion sings a dejected love note to the listener as the tribal hums serenade you. ‘Angest’ brings back the Darkthrone vibes with crusty riffs and rhythmic drumming that lulls you into a trance. Shrill harsh and clean vocals wash over the listener as the trems sink into your soul. ‘Morker Over Morker’ and ‘Three Winters Away’ are more typical, slower DSBM tracks that sound so desolate that you'll have to make sure there's nothing to harm yourself in the general vicinity.
Morning Star continues with the folky black metal vibes, mixing of harsh and clean vocals, softer sections and a mixture of icy riffs and acoustics until we get to ‘Eternal Martyr’. This track, as mentioned earlier, features Swedish emo rapper Bladee and it is one hell of a combination. A lot of black metal fans will probably be skeptical of this track, but I'll be damned if it doesn't work completely. It's a harsh black metal track at heart, but Bladee's echoing singing and whispering adds a haunting, stalker-ish vibe like someone is watching you hike by yourself in a forest. You can feel the eyes on you, but can never quite tell where they're coming from. Then when Orc's shrieks come blasting in, it's like being caught while having to fight for your life.
‘Trollsang’ and ‘Land Av Evig Natt I’ are two more folk tracks with serenading flutes and almost upbeat acoustics with chanting clean vocals that are indigenous in nature and really bring out the fact that Orc could probably make an album consisting entirely of Ukrainian folk music and be just as successful. The rest of the album alternates between black metal madness and tranquil post-punk-ish folk sounding music that continues the trend of what came before.
Morning Star is an album that doesn't quite reach the highs of the previous album for me personally, but with all the extra stuff going on here, it's really nice to see Crying Orc branching out and trying new things. He can make black metal music with the best of them nowadays, but the folk influences and post-punk-influenced DSBM sound really goes to show that he hasn't been resting on his laurels and doing only what feels comfortable. It's a very nice expansion on a sound that was already near perfection, and I can't do anything except applaud that.
