Formed in Umeå, Sweden, in 2007, Moloken want to create progressive experimental music that has a basis in metal, particularly the black metal scene. I was a massive fan of Rakoth when I first heard them many years ago, and both bands have a similar approach to their music. Here though, we have quite a short album, which was their first release in four years when it came out in 2015. Comprised of eight songs with a total length of less than half an hour, three of these are themselves shorter than 90 seconds, with one of these less than a minute. What is amazing then, is the amount of emotion that they manage to cram into everything they do. The vocals are raw, and kept surprisingly low in the mix, so that the twin guitars of Kristoffer Bäckström and Patrik Ylmefors are at the front, with the rhythm section of Jakob Burstedt and Nicklas Bäckström right there in your face. It is raw yet polished, basic but intelligent, and is always hammering into the brain with a feeling of ice and power. Just playing this album makes me feel cold, although as I write this I am in the middle of a Southern Hemisphere summer. I look out at the evening bright sunshine, yet am chilled to the bone.
This is powerful stuff, and it is only by playing close attention that the listener gets the most out of it. In some ways, it would be incredibly easy to dismiss this as “just” another black metal album with ideas above its’ station. But listen to the complexity of the arrangements, especially to the drummer’s polyrhythms and shuffles, and one realises that this is quite a special piece of work. But are we going to have to wait four years until the next one? I hope not.
