KËKHT ARÄKH - Morning Star

Dmytro Marchenko, aka Crying Orc, a Ukrainian artist born in 1997 in Mykolaiv (who later moved first to Warsaw, then Berlin and finally Tokyo), is one of the most despised figures among purists who listen to extreme metal. A poser, in their eyes, above all for his romantic black metal attitude, which first came to prominence back in 2021 with his most successful record (the cover of "Pale Swordsman" shows him sitting on a sofa, wearing sunglasses, holding a sword and a rose). An album promptly reissued by Sacred Bones, another anomaly when you consider that Këkht Aräkh plays a very raw and (deliberately) cheap-sounding black metal, winking at the depressive strand of the genre (a trend recently picked up by his fellow countryman Draugveil).

"Morning Star" landed on the shelves just a few days ago: seventeen tracks for a runtime that this time is much longer (over fifty minutes). As a result, the horizons have widened, with a sound that's now more varied and cross-pollinated: alongside the classic lo-fi outbursts ("Wänderer" or the single "Castle"), there's room for several acoustic passages drawn from Ukrainian folk tradition ("Genom Sorgen" among others) as well as introspective ballads steeped in desolation and sadness ("Drömsång"), much to the delight of the many young fans following the project mostly on TikTok.

Despite a few inevitable lulls (the forgettable "Eternal Martyr", for instance), Këkht Aräkh's music hits the mark whenever the starkest midtempo passages take over: "Mörker Över Mörker" and the following "Three Winters Away" (accompanied by a video that's amateurish to say the least) carry a compelling epic aftertaste, a trait often achieved through the use of clean vocals that are undeniably evocative, if not always perfectly in tune (the closing coda of "Land Av Evig Natt II"). Faced with a record like this, there's only one thing to do: take it or leave it.

If, during the second half of the Nineties, Scandinavian black metal hardliners considered trendy bands like Cradle Of Filth or Dimmu Borgir to be commercial sellouts, we dread to imagine how much scorn they'd pour today on a record that even features a Swedish rapper (Bladee) among its grooves. Not that these disputes concern us much, since we're here to judge the music, and all things considered, this Këkht Aräkh comeback sounds decidedly better than plenty of extreme-metal albums that take themselves terribly seriously.

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08/04/2026