Sunken – Lykke

I was not meant to review this.

I was meant to write a promo text. A neat little paragraph. Hand it in. Walk away. That was the plan.

Well, that didn’t happen. Of course not.

Because I started playing this album and immediately drowned in it. This keeps happening lately—music finding me when I’m busy, when I’m sensible, when I’m doing literally anything else. And then it derails my entire day, my week, my head. And I love it. Of course I do.

So here we are. Not a promo. Not neat. Just me, pacing and muttering and trying to pin feelings to paper before they slip away again.

Sunken have been around since 2013, quietly perfecting the kind of atmospheric black metal out of Denmark. They have released two albums prior to this one. And yet—somehow—they've never crossed my path. No late-night playlist spiral. No YouTube rabbit holes. Not even a suspiciously well-aimed algorithm nudge.

It took someone assigning me work—correctly guessing this would be my exact brand of catnip—for me to finally hear them. And now I’m furious. Furious at the wasted years. Furious I didn’t trip over this sooner.

Lykke is four tracks. Forty-eight minutes. Ten to fourteen minutes apiece, each one built to sprawl, shift, and sink its teeth in. After a five-year hiatus, they drop this into my lap like it’s nothing.

Gotta tell ya—that album is deceptible at first.

Ambient. Wide open. The intro on Din Røst malede Farver i Luften—I could rot there happily. It’s all morning glow and painted skies, the kind of peace you don’t realise you should be clutching tight until it’s gone.

And the title? Don’t even get me started. It makes me fucking cry and I don’t even know why.

Then—fifty seconds in—they drop this odd, warbly feedback noise. Which makes my head tilt and ears prick. And for absolutely no good reason, my brain goes, whales. Actual fucking whales. Don’t ask. Welcome to my brain.

Anyway. After the whales, the floor caves. Blast beats. Frantic riffing. Rasps. A straight drop into the black metal deep end. And I’ll be honest—first spin, I bristled. The jump felt clumsy, the riffs locked in a loop, the vocals stuck on default black metal setting. I was pacing the cage, waiting for the real hit—which lands at 4:30.

Drums loosen. Guitars pull back. And this choral, synthy melody just—rises. Like it’s been crouched in the corner the whole time, waiting for the right second to strike. Soaring. Floating. Lifting me clean out of the chair. Suddenly everything works—the blast beats are still there, but now they’re scaffolding instead of smothering. The vocals stop just rasping and start snarling at it, against it. A voice in the wind, breaking, wailing, pleading.

Then it all drops again. Soft synths over dissonance. A short break. A breath. Before the desperation comes back, sharper, more frayed. Drums and choirs carrying this hypnotic, almost swaying rhythm that drags you under without you noticing. Shipwrecked before you even see the shore coming. By the end of ten minutes, I’m hooked. But it turns out, that was just the warm-up.

Because Og det er Lykke is where the knife goes in.

It starts with strings and acoustic guitar strumming—curled over a slow crawl of bass. The melody rises, tension coiling so slowly you don’t realise you’re holding your breath. Then the guitars and cymbals break through, and the vocals—the same ones that had me going "hm, well" earlier—are now peeling back my skin. And yes, apparently that’s a compliment. Is there a good way to be flayed? Absolutely.

They rasp, they scream, they crack in places that sound like something vital tearing loose. At 6:30 it all collapses into silence. Just space. And then that wail—not relief, not catharsis. The sound of something breaking under its own weight. Someone standing alone, screaming into nothing because there’s nowhere else for it to go.

Og det er Lykke. Translates to "And that is Happiness."

Well. People like us will never be truly happy. We’re always chasing the spark. Never done. A tortured mind, torturing itself again every single day, for all eternity.

Because that’s what the lyrics are—an entire sarcastic toast to our neat, fabricated little illusions. "We’re fine here," they insist, over and over, until it stops sounding like reassurance and starts sounding like a dare. 

The vocals are feral again, no restraint, and two-thirds in they strip it all back—pure atmosphere, tenderness laced with pain. Sunken are masters at this handoff, letting you drift from ferocity into quiet without ever snapping you out of the mood. You’re carried out on slow guitar picking and soft melody, like the tide pulling you somewhere you’re not ready to leave.

And then Når Livet går på Hæld arrives—the odd one out, and the one that floors me. Piano chords, measured and heavy, distortion bleeding in, and then a scream that says everything without needing words. Against choirs. Against the weight of the drums.

Here, the storm is unnecessary. We can walk into the quiet ocean on our own—wave after wave of quiet farewells, not just to people, but to places, to moments, to the sun before it faded.

This is where I stop "listening to music" and just let go. The sparse percussion and careful instrumentation make the air feel thick, the vocals more like a shadow than the focal point, adding weight to a sadness that was already there.

Blast beats and rasps rip through the middle, like the storm’s making one last attempt to drag you under—but the calm swallows it whole. What’s left is the after. The hollow. The exhale you didn’t realise you’d been holding. Female vocals drift in, wordless, almost too gentle for the wreckage they’re floating over. And then it’s gone.

Lykke is one of those albums that just—gets it. Knows exactly when to be cruel and when to be kind. Harshness and softness, stitched so tight you can’t see the seams—you’re just in it, drifting, breathing. If you know that knife-edge moment where light cuts through darkness just long enough for the world to glisten before it’s gone? Yeah. That.

It’s atmospheric black metal done exactly right. Nothing too much. Nothing too little.

And when it ends, I’m already playing it again. Obviously.