I’ll be honest I really wanted to start the review with a Mork calling Ghost Cult gag. I mean REALLY wanted to, had it planned out and everything. The problem being is that Eremittens Mal (Peaceville) is such a damn good album it kind of felt wrong to pluck that low hanging fruit. Mork is a Norwegian one-man black metal band and a damn good one at that.

Black Metal is one of the more innovative sounds in metal having spread its dank tendrils throughout much of modern scene, often with mixed results. Mork are very much grounded in the second wave black metal orthodoxy, they bear more than a passing similarity to Darkthrone or even Burzum.

Often the problem with old school black metal, and the true sound is that if it’s done properly then by definition it tends to sound the same. Eremittens Mal doesn’t compromise the traditional sound of black metal, it’s very much grounded in that original yet also retains a contemporary feel to it.

There’s a freshness about the performance which makes it feel that rather than yet another copy, the clock has been turned back a bit and it gives you that feeling of back when this stuff was fresh, dangerous and exciting. Low-fi production which shows more spit than polish, enjoyable swirling buzzsaw riffing which are abrasive but not overly necro in their sound, simple song structures with a surprising amount of icy groove… tracks like ‘I Hornenes Bilde’ are guaranteed to warm the coldest heart like a burning church on bonfire night.

Effective vocals which display quite a range switch from the traditional raspy vocals, to chanting and growls, shifting well in keeping with the tracks such as the more sombre and contemporary feel of ‘Gravcl’ The drums stand out in their energy and have that raw feel probably closer to the rough and ready ‘drumkit falling down a flight of stairs’ feel of Venom than anything else.

I wasn’t sure I’d like the album as that true black metal can often be much more miss than hit, but Mork really have managed to take that old KVLT formula and put out something which remains true to the 2nd wave but also deftly avoiding cliché to produce something which has that fresh and vibrant vitality which made black metal such a shot in the arm all those years ago. Nanu Nanu

8.0/10

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