RBOTD #188: Skuggmörker
Black mehtal
https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Skuggm%C3%B6rker/29887
Country: Sweden
Location: Ingelstad, Kronoberg
Genre: black metal
Formed in: 1995
Status: Split-up
By the Numbers
Skuggmörker is the:
36th band formed in the 1990s
Sixth band from Sweden
63rd band that has split-up at the time of querying
Its genre tags have been seen:
Black metal: 51 times
Member Connections
Evrakon, a black metal band from Växjö, Kronoberg
Lysefall, a black metal band from Ingelstad, Kronoberg
Ondska, a black metal band from Ingelstad, Kronoberg
Know 'Em?
Nope. I am now 10/188.
Sketch Check
Hm. Well, the band was named Holocaust in 1993. However, everything looks like run-of-the-mill Satan stuff, so I'll give Skuggmörker the benefit of the doubt for now.
RateYourMusic Scores
Skuggmörker's highest-rated release is 1995's Härskare av den svarta natten, which achieved a 2.76 average on 4 ratings.
Skuggmörker's adjusted score places it in the 24th percentile at the time of measuring.
Adjusted scores are calculated similarly to the Trad Belt scoring system. Please read that column for more information.
Trifecta Tracker
Skuggmörker did not achieve the trifecta.
A band can achieve the trifecta by titling a song after itself on a self-titled release. Iron Maiden's "Iron Maiden" on 1980's Iron Maiden is an example of the trifecta.
The greatest sin in black metal is being unremarkable. You can be good, you can be bad, but being boring is instant death. Skuggmörker, Swedish for "Shadowdarkness," is deathly uninteresting if its only streaming offering, Härskare Av Den Svarta Natten, indicates what it brought to the table. To be clear, that would be nothing.
By a second demo, you at least hope a band has worked out how to do something/anything because they've heard themselves at least once. I mean, there's proof, a smoking gun of a first demo. Skuggmörker? If this is second act, what the hell was the opening salvo like?1
Härskare Av Den Svarta Natten's riffs are boring, power-chording through progressions that must've felt tired even in 1995. The vocals are better but ultimately boring, sounding like something an intern cooked up for a music textbook that needed a black metal example. For the most part, the songs are boring, starting nowhere, going nowhere, and ending nowhere. From a musicianship perspective, the most exciting thing about the six-track set is listening to the drummer, Smaug, struggling to keep time. The desolation, indeed. It's exciting in the same sense that watching little leaguers field fly balls is exciting.
Does anything work? The keyboards aren't awful. "Nifelhel" is nothing more than fake-ass organs and spokels, and it's the most fully realized track of the bunch. The wobble of the straight-to-tape recording gives it some much-needed strangeness. "En stig till helvete" has two keyboards and that should double the strangeness in a good way, but it's held back by Smaug, who sounds like an arthritic mastiff trying to get on a bed in the apartment above you.2 There you go. It's not great when the rest of your raw black metal is overshadowed by one-finger synth drones and a drummer who sounds like three shoes in a dryer.
Is Härskare Av Den Svarta Natten even historically significant? No. Per Metallum, 198 black metal bands had formed in Sweden by the end of 1995. Scrolling through the birth records, you realize that, even in developing scenes, everyone is on a different timeline. While Skuggmörker was barely holding it together on this primitive, corpsepaint-on-a-cave-wall artifact, Naglfar released Vittra and Dissection dropped Storm of the Light's Bane. A year before, Dawn debuted with Nær sólen gar niþer for evogher. A year after, Diabolical Masquerade debuted with Ravendusk in My Heart. Bathory had already undergone numerous transformations and entered the nadir of its career with Octagon. It's wild to think of this dinky demo within that context, a fossilized trilobite sucked up into the vortex of a stronger-by-the-second tornado. Unfortunately, that's the most interesting thing about it.
Oh, wait, no. NO. The most interesting thing about it is that this somehow got repressed on wax in 2020 by Rotting Misery. Seriously! Look at this:
3 different versions exists:
- "Die Hard" edition in a screen printed cloth bag, red vinyl. 40 first copies.
- Red vinyl (60 remaining copies of the red vinyl, 100 in total).
- Black vinyl (200 copies).
This got a 300-piece run but we can’t keep these albums in print? Oh, Rotting Misery moved all of those 300 pieces, by the way. Of course it did. A few distros still seem to carry it if you're allergic to money or living out the worst version of Brewster's Millions.
This is one of those elements of fringe metal fandom that I'll never be able to understand. Skuggmörker is an absolute nothingburger, as unremarkable as they come. It sounds bad. It's played poorly. It has no atmosphere. It has no charisma. It has no charm. It influenced no one. It has no feeling. And, worst of all, it's not bad enough to be a black metal Plan 9. What is the appeal? The perceived scarcity? Is this a proto-NFT? I don't get it.
Now, some obscure death metal? Let's talk.
Rando Observations:
For what it’s worth, Evrakon, which had at least three Skuggmörker members in its ranks over its similarly brief lifespan, tries harder on Spellbound. The 1995 demo consisting of one 35-minute track has some decently bonkers banshee yells.
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