Morketsvind has released a lot of stuff but still seems to be a relative unknown in the crowded field of dungeon synth. This is a pretty good, powerful early album by him, and out of the two cds I have by him – the other being The Journey – this one starts with THE most experimental of them all, being "I" (as none of the tracks have proper names to them). It starts off having this odd, synthesized and weird sound (almost like a synthesized stopwatch or something), then the powerful synths come in, along with a kettle drum and what is like a synthesized version of the wobbly, out of tune guitar solo of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers's "You Got Lucky", just sounding a lot better.
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"II" starts off with synthesized horns and has a mournful part starting at the 1:05 mark, then it goes back to being powerful, then somewhat mournful again. “IV”, though, is the most mournful-sounding of the bunch, although it gets a bit of a serene tone at about 3:08.
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“V” has a more majestic sound with the horns, as it seems to me it could’ve been called “The Tournament” like on his later The Journey cd (case this one needs song titles: kids, make up your own!). There’s also, at about 1:26, a fuzzy, 16–bit-like video game music part before going back to its powerful self, which a similar part is repeated in the closer of “VI”, which has a dreary beginning, but then at about 1:00 there’s a really nice touch with some higher keyboard notes getting added to the main rhythm.
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There’s very little wrong with this album except that it’s a short one, having only six tracks that don’t even last 25 minutes total (the other bummer being how “VI” sounds like it’s REALLY about to start something pretty cool but then it suddenly just ends).
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However, there are different sides of Morketsvind, as here you’ve got power, and then with later releases such as The Journey, he took a lighter (but still very good) approach, throwing in Renaissance-type bits on that album, for instance.
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Something to definitely take notice of, either way.