Mörker’s “Höstmaker” features a dark and melodic style of black metal which isn’t overly innovative, but is nonetheless very listenable and makes for a surprisingly enjoyable album.

The general blueprint for Mörker’s sound is mid-paced black metal with melodic riffing, decent atmosphere and some tasteful keyboard and acoustic passages thrown in. The vocals are pretty standard black metal fare, and the drumming is above-average and adds some color to the music. Songs generally don’t stray much tempo-wise, but drumming variation and switches between tremolo-picked black metal riffing and slower guitar-driven leads keep the music interesting.

I think Mörker is at their best when they alternate soaring, almost-catchy minor-key guitar melodies with harsher black metal passages, such as on tracks like ‘I Flodens Forsande Brus’, ‘Segertåg’ and ‘I Kamp Mellan Liv Och Död.’ ‘Djupa Spår Av Tvivel’ is a particularly melody-driven song, sounding almost like a blackened version of “Tales From the Thousand Lakes”-era Amorphis.

I at first felt that the latter part of the album was a step down in quality from the opening tracks, but I’ve since realized that what changes is the emphasis on melody and leads. The first seven tracks are all pretty great and melodically jump out at you almost at first listen, while some of the later tracks slow things down a bit and take a darker, more traditional black metal approach.

Overall, “Höstmaker” is a very rewarding listen and one of the better albums from 2008 that I’ve come across. The lyrics are all in Swedish, but I never really pay much attention to lyrics anyway so it’s not a big deal. The music speaks for itself.

Oh and if you can find the limited-edition A5-sized digipak version, get it. It doesn’t include anything additional, but the album art is beautiful and the larger packaging looks really sweet!

» Buy “Hostmakter” at Amazon.com

» Buy the A5 digipak version of “Hostmakter” from The End Records