Këkht Aräkh - Morning Star - review
Këkht Aräkh - Morning Star - review
Tracklist
01. Wänderer02. Castle
03. Lament
04. Genom Sorgen [feat. VS-]
05. Angest
06. Mörker Över Mörker
07. Three Winters Away
08. Drömsang
09. Raven King
10. Vigil
11. Eternal Martyr [feat. Bladee]
12. Trollsang [feat. Spöke]
13. Land Av Evig Natt L
14. Land Av Evig Natt LL
15. Gates
16. Morning Star
17. Outro [feat. VARG2]
A review by
Roman Doez May 19, 2026
It’s hard to picture just how popular Këhkt Aräkh has become if, like me, you don’t really listen to his music. He currently has more monthly listeners on Spotify than Mgła, and some of his tracks have garnered more than a million views on YouTube. This kind of runaway success is virtually unheard of in the realm of black metal, especially for a solo bedroom project, and naturally, there were high expectations for the follow-up to Pale Swordsman. And it did not deliver.
Morning Star is, for most of its run time, a very generic and uninspired black metal album with some of the least memorable tracks I have ever heard. This is partly due to their length, with none of them reaching the 4-minute mark, but Pale Swordsman had tracks of similar length and they were much more engaging. This means that the real culprit is the songwriting, which, in addition to its severe lack of cool ideas or memorable melodies, is extremely repetitive and features some truly strange decisions. Take for example “Angest”, which just randomly ends after two and a half minutes with a fadeout, only to be followed by a haphazard acoustic outro, or the Bladee collab “Eternal Martyr” with its horribly unfitting and silly-sounding clean vocals.
This isn’t to say that all of Morning Star is bad; tracks like “Wanderer” and “Land Av Evig Natt II” for example definitely work, but there is all in all very little substance to them, and by the fourth song you’ll have heard all the album has to offer. It also commits the terrible crime of being 50 minutes long with no less than SEVENTEEN tracks. This type of black metal is already not built for releases longer than 35 minutes, but combining it with this songwriting makes it extremely tedious to get through. It’s just listening to the same mediocre black metal song fifteen times in a row with random folk interludes sprinkled throughout; there is nothing here worth coming back to.
I’ve rarely heard an album that felt so completely half-assed. It’s an offensively underwhelming release with copy-pasted tracks, uninteresting interludes and a random Bladee collab to market it to terminally online teenagers, and that’s why it gets under my skin so much. The weapon on the cover art isn’t even a morning star, how do you mess that up! It feels completely cynical and disingenuous, and I have no good will for such an album. Just listen to a random track from Pale Swordsman thirteen times in a row and you'll have a much better experience.
Rating breakdown
| Performance: | 7 |
| Songwriting: | 4 |
| Originality: | 3 |
| Production: | 7 |
Written on 19.05.2026 by
Written on 19.05.2026 by
It's not good music if it doesn't give you a headache Comments
Comments:
8
Visited by
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Posts: 1819  |
Posts: 1819
My first exposure to bladee and definitely my last. Damn that guy is awful. Major downgrade from Pale Swordsman as well. Sad times.
---- Need a break from headbanging? Restore your street cred by visiting my hip-hop list! Tha Swagnum Opus: A Selection Of Hip-Hop For The Curious Metalhead
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Posts: 1274 Written by A Real Mönkey on 19.05.2026 at 18:19 Bladee's solo work is very different from this, I also don't really like it but for completely different reasons than what he's shown in this collaboration lol
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Posts: 3773  |
Posts: 3773
I am yet to hear it (on todo list for this year) but 17 tracks in 50 minutes does not sound like type of black metal I like.
---- "Cross is only an iron,hope is just an illusion,freedom is nothing but a name..." "Build your walls of the dead stone...Build your roofs of a dead wood..Build your dreams of a dead thoughts" 
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 Posts: 310 |
Posts: 310
While I think the review is well written, I also sense a persistent undertone of annoyance with this projects popularity (which indeed may be "undeserved") and that the review is harsher than it would be otherwise (which is still completely legitimate standpoint, don't get me wrong). Anyway, I like the catchy "campiness" of this album, don't know why exactly... While it is not on the same level as its predecessor I still find it worth a listen.
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Posts: 1274 Written by Silent Creeper on 20.05.2026 at 19:48 That was definitely not my intent, as I think Pale Swordsman is a good album and got the praise it deserved. My main gripe is that Morning Star feels completely soulless and half assed, to me it feels more like he's capitalizing on his now massive audience than trying to express something through his music. It feels cynical and that's why it rubs me the wrong way, this is otherwise a perfectly unremarkable album to me and I wouldn't be as negative as I am in this review if it were released in different circumstances. I do think it's not completely worthless and there are a few fun tracks here and there, but yeah you definitely got a lot more out of it than me lol
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 Posts: 6695 |
Posts: 6695
I was not interested in listening to this album until I read this review, and now I feel like I should just so I know what it's really like. I cannot imagine what an artist like Bladee could bring to such a project or how a black metal musician could be so frivolous in their selection of medieval armament to pose with. I'm curious, even though I know full well what mediocre black metal sounds like. Frankly, I'm baffled by the success of Këkht Aräkh. I thought Pale Swordsman was a fine but generally unremarkable album. Certainly not something I would want 50 minutes of instead of 30. (Of course, I'm also somewhat confused by Mgła's popularity, too, so maybe there's something I'm missing in Basically Just Black Metal. But why did this become a meme?)
---- "Earth is small and I hate it" - Lum Invader I'm the Agent of Steel.
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Posts: 1274 Written by ScreamingSteelUS on 21.05.2026 at 00:18 Well that's because he does basically nothing, he does some clean singing on one song, if you don't already know it's Bladee doing it you'd have no way of knowing. There wasn't even an attempt to bring some of his style into the music, it's just black metal with a bit of clean singing.
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 Posts: 9575 |
Posts: 9575
Does this mean Këkht Aräkh is drain gang
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