Review Summary: Keeping the flame alive.
In recent years, Russia has developed a large and lively community of both artists and fans devoted to the underground, black metal derived atmospheric music style known as "dungeon synth", which roots can be found in the sound of early 1990s black metal musicians' side-projects.
Active since the late-90s, Morketsvind can rightfully be considered a forerunner and veteran of the Russian scene; however "Age of Lord" is the project's first proper album, coming after a decade-long series of EP releases. The one word which best describes Morketsvind's approach to dungeon synth is "simplistic", both in a positive and negative way.
Faithful to the old-school path traced by the likes of Mortiis and Wongraven, "Age of Lord" features nine raw, epic fantasy-inspired tracks; the compositional style, perfectly summarised in the opener "Advent of Dark Lord", shows impressionistic and minimalistic qualities, employing a small number of layers and a very limited sonic palette to convey an epic, martial feel, while at the same time revealing a strong sense of melody and structure. The music, driven by synthesized horns and featuring only a few more orchestral patches, appears to be entirely played on a '90s sampler keyboard, which adds to the unpolished old-school vibe but in the long distance comes off as a bit repetitive and dull; more dynamic and varied arrangements would have done much better justice to the good compositions underneath, which nevertheless succeed in painting bleak yet engaging pictures of a dark age.
The overall sound carries a sketchy, unfinished feel, which requires the listener to fill up the gaps using his own imagination, very much in the vein of early Mortiis and more recent lo-fi dungeon synth. This sense of minimalistic rawness also extends to meta-musical elements such as the song titles, which range from single atmosphere-setting words ("Forest", "Triumph") to short descriptions ("Advent of Dark Lord", "Lord's tower"), and the simple, crudely assembled cover art.
All in all, "Age of Lord" is a solid album which will undoubtedly please fans of old-school, lo-fi dungeon synth, but, in a way, it feels like a missed opportunity to create an opus with a wider scope.
