Artist: Mordberg
Country: Germany
Label: Sturmglanz Black Metal Manufaktur
Formats: Cassette EP / CD EP
Year: 2026
As I write this, the temperature is almost at 30 degrees, and I’m trying to do as little as possible and keep the house cool: windows and curtains closed. You could call this a kind of summer solitude. Mordberg, a German one-man Black Metal band, on the other hand, takes a less sunny view and is still very much in winter mode. Or, at least, he was when he wrote this new EP, ‘Winter Solitude’, which has now been released by Sturmglanz Black Metal Manufaktur on cassette tape and CD(r?).
And, frosty this EP is. With a musical scope deeply rooted in the Black Metal traditions of what we could call the Second Wave of American Black Metal, ‘Winter Solitude’ is like a Black Metal time machine that harks back to the late 90s. Much of Mordberg’s fundamentals can be traced back to those visionary works of Judas Iscariot, Weltmacht, Leviathan and Xasthur. But even if this already paints a decent picture of what you’re going to get, there still is a good dose of German Black Metal added from around the same era in the genre’s history in the form of the more mournful sounding Moonblood and Nargaroth (‘Herbstleyd’ and ‘Geliebte Des Regens’), all built on those very first Burzum and Forgotten Woods recording. In short: this is the sort of music that would later be regarded as the ultimate cradle of what would become “Depressive” or “Suicidal” Black Metal: long-drawn and repetitive riffs, one-dimensional and equally repeating drum patterns and an icy scream on top of it.
Maybe ‘Winter Solitude’ doesn’t come with the same impact as those mentioned above, but undoubtedly, this sure will please the fans of the genre. Grauen, the man behind this project, certainly knows his classics and with keeping his songs interesting throughout the full twenty-five minutes playing time, he shows he has enough talent in suspenseful song writing – even within this genre’s rather narrow musical framework. At a time when Depressive/Suicidal Black Metal has become little more than a lazy gimmick, listening to this second Mordberg EP is certainly a breath of fresh air.
