Entangled Excavations Review

Band	Morkera
Album	Entangled Excavations
Type	Album (Studio full-length)
Released	June 6, 2022
Genres	Black Metal, Blackened Death Metal
Length	37:33

Reviewer :  Cosmicism         Rating :  95 / 100

Did you ever just say, "I don't know why, but I really feel like listening again to that album I heard a few days ago," and then you start to realize how amazing it is?

That happened to me with this one, and then I started playing it 3 or 4 times a day.

I was so busy enjoying the music, I didn't notice I was listening to a mix of black metal & death metal. Anyway, it's all good, but with the 4th track Silent Gatherers, the album gets amazingly powerful. The singer's approach is very satisfying and most of the guitar melodies are extremely catchy. The drummer stays very busy. The drums are either very complicated, or in rapid kick drum paradise, or both at the same time. The tone of the album is mostly bleak and simultaneously spiteful and mocking. The result is delectable and hypnotizing.

Next about the album cover. It's the band's spokeswoman. She put on her best earrings and brought out her most radiant smile to promote Morkera's debut. To be serious though, this is a very striking painting, and I think she might be the personification of the band's name. Mørkera is a plural form for a Norwegian word for 'darkness.' I'm sure you'll remember a bunch of black metal bands with names like mork-something. However, I have a hunch that this artist took the singular form mørker and made it into a female name, and then chose this awesome painting by Vladimir Chebakov to match that idea. It's like she's the one singing the songs to us.

The drumming is probably the most amazing part of this album, and the guest drummer, Pierce Williams is in Skeletal Remains (the one from California) and other bands too. I hope we'll be lucky enough that Williams and the anonymous Croatian work together on the next Morkera album, because they had such wonderful synergy here.