Këkht Aräkh is the Ukrainian project founded in 2018 by Dmitry Marchenko. Originally released on the Finnish label Livor Mortis in 2021, Pale Swordsman goes to even greater extents in building a bold and atmospheric sonic palette, and it’s now seeing a worldwide reissue via Brooklyn label Sacred Bones.

For the sound design of the album, Dmitry was inspired by The Stooges’ Raw Power to deliver a more soft sounding album, decisively less “metal”. Traditional black metal song structures still persist in songs like “Night Descends” and “In The Garden”. However, their rawness and fast tempos is quickly cut through by dark ambient passages in “Amor” and “Intro” and softly played desolate ballads like “Nocturne” and “Lily”.