Morkera are a black metal band from Croatia and this is their second album.
Aggravations is a 36-minute album of modern black metal that’s beautifully harsh and aggressive, while still achieving a certain level of atmospheric darkness.
Oh, but this is vicious stuff. Mokera play black metal with the sort of hostility that screams out of the album with near-palpable hatred and rage. A full album of this sort of material would have been quite something, but what elevates Aggravations even higher is the sinister moods, tense atmospheres, and uncomfortable feelings that the band are able to manifest across the songs.
Morkera’s barbed blackened cocktail contains a few different elements, from classic black metal influences to more contemporary avant-garde and dissonant ones. It definitely skews towards the latter though, as Aggravations is a twisted, warped beast of atypical proportions and off kilter violence. Alongside this it also features a strain of death metal ingredients that add a sadistic muscular side to the music’s grim intensity. You can also, infrequently, hear some thrash in some of the angular, jagged riffs; we’re talking the furious and ugly old-school Kreator sort here.
The vocals are inhuman sounds that seem to be utterances from some unseen Hell dimension. Diverse, interesting, terrifying, and captivating, the singer gives a great performance throughout.
Aggravations is a raw and powerful release. It takes the bones of black metal, chews them up, and spits out a venomous, virulent monster of claws, spikes, and intense daemonic menace. Morkera’s music is striking, but after the dust has settled, and the wounds are barely healed, you can appreciate how horrifically nasty and worthy this album is of being experienced over and over again.
Highly recommended.
Wonderbox Metal 