Sunken – Lykke
Release Date: 24th October 2025
Label: Eisenwald
Bandcamp
Genre: Atmospheric Black Metal, Post-Black Metal.
FFO: MØL, Afsky, Alcest, Deafheaven.
Review By: Magnus Rotås
Last time I visited Århus I was a happy vacationer, but the happiness didn’t last forever though, as I almost broke my thumb in a ping-pong accident. Little did I know, there was a local black metal band there called Sunken that was gonna make an album about this. No, not about a random Norwegian guy travelling to their city doing stupid shit, but rather about the way we as humans try to escape from the sadness of real life by chasing this ideal we call happiness.
It was made clear from the first few seconds after I hit play on Lykke that this album was gonna be something special. And as the first track Din Røst Malede Farver I Luften (Your Voice Painted Colors In the Air) opens up with a dreamlike guitar soaked in heavy reverb and layered synths that paints a mesmerizing landscape, it gets interrupted with the abrasive sound of what I can only describe as the sound of a sorrowful spirit being hit by a ray of light, revealing itself and screeching in pain. It’s one hell of a beautiful intro, and as the whole band starts playing – they lock you in a steady melancholic black metal trance that feels hazy and hard to navigate, but always with this soaring melody floating atop everything else to guide you through.
This ethereal atmosphere is so thick and hazy it’s at times hard to hear what is even going on, but it’s a spellbinding atmosphere where you drift off and get completely lost in the music. The four 10-15-min long tracks feel short as you float away on this cloud of noise. There is so much reverb on everything in fact that it creates a backdrop as deep as an endless pit, where you picture the band playing their last few songs of their life on the precipice of this void, screaming into it their last few hollow memories of happiness.
All the promises of the joy of life’s utopia, was just a fever dream painted by a young imagination, ends the first track.
Og Det Er Lykke (And it is Happiness) works almost as a therapeutic response to the bleak first track. Martin, the vocalist, sings with complete conviction and raw emotion until his voice almost shatters at times, screaming that you should try your best to see the beauty in life.
The band really knows how to create these beautiful and melancholic moments that really linger with the listener. The way they build and release tension is actually quite unique, and the pacing is just perfect, with enough sober moments out of the hazy wall of noise to not feel one dimensional.
The album is an emotionally devastating experience. It makes you reflect on your own life and the moments you have been happy. The album makes you feel like you have woken up from a hangover after the happiest moment of your life and realize that it was all just fake, and was just a way for you to escape your real sorrows, be it for just a brief moment of your life. But also come to terms with how that’s all happiness really is, a short break from reality.
No track speaks more directly about this escapism than Glædesfærd (The happy journey, poorly translated from Danish).
We are having such a good time here in the back of the plane. Why feel anything real, when we can laugh and cry as a group… We feel safe in our collective escape from reality. In a suitcase filled with nothingness, come let us raise our glasses for our idyll, forlorn and made up.
I love how these guys write lyrics, it is poetic, yet not too vague, and it also manages to be thought-provoking and moving. But maybe even more than that, I love how well the music actually manages to tell the same story.
Når Livet Går På Hæld (When Life Comes to an End) is an epic closer that feels like a true Catharsis, like something the whole album has been building up to. A beautiful piano melody is playing to the backdrop of this chaotic noise. Regret kicks in for not allowing yourself to be more happy while you were alive, as life is coming to an end. The last two minutes are a long fade out of angelic female voices humming. Not the way one first would have expected a black metal album to end, but this album couldn’t have ended in a better way.
Seldom has an album managed to take me to such deep dark levels as Lykke, and even more seldom has an album lifted me up again in such a fashion that I feel thankful for life, and want to live it to its fullest degree – despite how meaningless it all might be.
Orchestral textures, choral arrangements, and mournful strings weave seamlessly into the sound, while anguished vocals cut through with precision. Every single aspect of Sunken’s music work together perfectly to paint one cohesive whole on this record. The band has really taken a massive step forward with this release, and I can’t wait to see where these guys will go next.
I couldn’t be more confident when I say that this album is a masterpiece.
(5 / 5)
