9 July 2024
Sarke return after three years with their eighth album. As a listener who enjoys listening to the band, I actually got to know them a little late. Of course, it was impossible not to hear the band because of Great Nocturno, but I can honestly say that I started listening to the band with their 2019 album Gastwerso.
As I’ ve mentioned, Sarke is a band founded by Darkthrone’s Nocturno Culto and Sarke from Khold/Tulus. They later went through minor line-up changes, but throughout their career the backbone of the band has been Sarke, Nocturno Culto, Steinar Gundersen, Anders Hunstad quartet.
Their trademark is their dark music clad in Black Metal with intense 70’s rock/progressive rock influences and harsh metal vocals. Nocturno is of course a very competent Black metal vocalist but in Sarke he has a cleaner different vocal style which suits their music better. The album has various similarities with the previous 2 albums; Gastwerso and Allsighr. They are a band who have a unique agenda and prefer to hang out within that.
When we look up to their music specifically in terms of black metal, keyboards which are generally used to create atmosphere, except for some of the melodic black metal bands, serve as one of the main instruments in Sarke music. The keyboards, which sometimes act as a small orchestra, are flamboyant.
The album is a calmer successor compared to the previous, Allsighr. The third song, “Lost”, is a good example of this. The album sets off to a good start with Phantom Recluse, which was also released as the first single. “Death Construction”, which comes right after it, is personally my favorite. It then sails into stagnant waters, and gradually increases the tempo after the second half coming to a doomy, slow close with the last song, Macabre Embrace. It’s a good album that generally reflects what Sarke have been doing lately, with a few greater songs compared to the rest.
Enslaved covered Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song in a TV program on NRK. When listening to the album, that performance of Enslaved comes to mind occasionally.
After all, I think Allsighr is a better album. But I have the feeling that its value will increase gradually among listeners, as a wine becoming tastier in the course of time.
8/10
