{"id":514119,"date":"2026-07-07T12:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T12:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/514119\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T12:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T12:52:09","slug":"mortem-morketid-review-angry-metal-guy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/514119\/","title":{"rendered":"Mortem – M\u00f8rketid Review | Angry Metal Guy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Now here\u2019s a band with pedigree! Norway\u2019s black metal squad Mortem have been around since 1987, right at the forefront of the infamous second wave. Though their heyday produced only the Slow Death demo and their debut record, Ravnsvart, took until 2019 to release, their individual band members have kept themselves busy. Consisting of guitarist\/keyboardist Steinar Sverd Johnsen, vocalist Marius Vold, drummer Jan \u201cHellhammer\u201d Blomberg, and newcomer bassist Tor Stavenes, Mortem\u2019s genealogy traces lines through the likes of Mayhem, Arcturus, Thorns, 1349, Emperor, and way too many other bands. Now, almost forty years since their inception, Mortem are unleashing their sophomore album M\u00f8rketid, promising in their promo \u201ceight tracks of savage, eerie, and often epic black metal.\u201d Will Mortem\u2019s collective experience translate to top-shelf black metal, or will M\u00f8rketid\u2019s time under the sun be short-lived?<\/p>\n

\u201cM\u00f8rketid\u201d is the Norwegian word for polar night, where the sun stays below the horizon for weeks during the winter months. It\u2019s an eerie time that Mortem capture well on M\u00f8rketid. Between the persistent tremolos and rasps across M\u00f8rketid, an unsettling and understated melody gives the project an uncanny feel. Mortem\u2019s keyboard presence does a lot for M\u00f8rketid\u2019s texture, bestowing a creepy music box melody to \u201cAftermath\u201d and a beefy Dimmu Borgir symphonic gothicness to \u201cDitt \u00d8des \u00c6re.\u201d But overall, if you\u2019ve heard Mayhem\u2019s early stuff, you know what to expect from Mortem. Buzzsaw guitars, phlegmy rasps, and drawn-out staggering through the dark are the name of the game here, highlighted on songs like \u201cThe Mighty Odious\u201d and \u201cM\u00f8rkets Ormebol.\u201d Mortem have been around long enough to get these fundamentals down pat.<\/p>\n

\ufeffMorketid by Mortem<\/a><\/p>\n

Though Mortem clearly put in the work, there are yet few standout performances on M\u00f8rketid. Outside of some surprisingly shreddy solos across M\u00f8rketid\u2019s back end (\u201cDen Sanne Gud,\u201d \u201cAftermath\u201d), Johnsen\u2019s riffs are murky and standard-issue black metal, and while I appreciate Stavenes\u2019 pronounced bass presence and the punchiness that comes with it (\u201cSkygge\u00e5nd\u201d), it nonetheless stays too firmly in the pocket. Similarly, Vold\u2019s rasps are thick and gritty but rarely venture off from his slow-n-low mode, making his vocal presence seep into the background. Johnsen\u2019s keyboards and Hellhammer\u2019s drumming deserve note, however, as spidery key runs on \u201cM\u00f8rketid\u201d and \u201cM\u00f8rkets Ormebol\u201d do the heavy lifting in building mood and identity on their tracks, and shifting grooves and blasts all across M\u00f8rketid are its most varied and exciting asset. Mortem\u2019s songwriting approach likely contributes to the muted performances: they\u2019re hellbent for murk. But Mortem have ludicrous talent in their ranks, and I think a few more standout moments would\u2019ve easily elevated M\u00f8rketid.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And therein lies M\u00f8rketid\u2019s biggest issue: memorability. Besides \u201cBlodvassen Grunn,\u201d where Mortem open the blinds a smidge for a touch of lightness in their style, M\u00f8rketid is monotonously dark. Over-repetition plagues many of M\u00f8rketid\u2019s tracks, watering down the vitality of songs like \u201cM\u00f8rkets Ormebol\u201d and \u201cSkygge\u00e5nd\u201d while inflating M\u00f8rketid\u2019s runtime. None of Mortem\u2019s songs are extraordinarily long, sitting around four to six minutes on average, but I often found myself checking the time halfway through each song anyway. Production owns some of the blame here; though everything\u2019s clearly audible, everything sounds crushed and undynamic, wearing on both the ears and mind. There are times when Mortem flirt with variety, like the darkly groovy second half of \u201cAftermath\u201d and the time \u201cDen Sanne Gud\u201d gets quiet and threatens to veer into an Iron Maiden epic, but these are few and far between on M\u00f8rketid. I don\u2019t think I can give high marks to something I can\u2019t remember after many listens.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s crazy to think that a band whose line-up is as storied as Mortem\u2019s could struggle with a sophomore slump this far into their career, but here we are. M\u00f8rketid isn\u2019t a bad record, but one that\u2019s played too safely to truly stand out. Production issues and monotonous songwriting knock it down a notch further. Mortem occupy a space in metal\u2019s history where a subpar record isn\u2019t going to blemish their legacy. They were instrumental in founding one of its most iconic sub-genres. But M\u00f8rketid wasn\u2019t released in 1987, and so has to stand up against the scores of other black metal releases from the decades since then. Sadly, it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Rating: Disappointing
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 256 kbps MP3
Label: Peaceville Records<\/a>
Websites: facebook.com\/mortemnorway<\/a> | bandcamp.com\/album\/morketid<\/a>
Releases Worldwide: July 3rd, 2026<\/p>\n

\n\tGive in to Your Anger:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Now here\u2019s a band with pedigree! Norway\u2019s black metal squad Mortem have been around since 1987, right at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[43834,24612,2246,255553,842,183732,2211,156,26067,255554,14654,255556,255555,157,111,139,2788,69,112948,762,763,145339],"class_list":["post-514119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-43834","tag-2-0","tag-2246","tag-arcturus","tag-black-metal","tag-dimmu-borgir","tag-emperor","tag-entertainment","tag-iron-maiden","tag-jul26","tag-mayhem","tag-morketid","tag-mortem","tag-music","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-norwegian-metal","tag-nz","tag-peaceville-records","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-thorns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}