7/10

There's this unmistakable sense of urgency running through 'The eleventh hour'. The debut album from Swedish-Danish art-rock duo MäRK is built around tension: between darkness and hope, machinery and humanity, outrage and vulnerability. Helena Berglund and Christian Rønn describe their music as "electronica poetica", and across the album that phrase begins to make sense as something more than just a clever label.

Throughout, the record draws from electronica, industrial music, krautrock and trip-hop, but its most distinctive feature is the way those elements are folded into a wider cinematic environment. Battered piano, church organ, accordion, guitar and toy piano sit alongside field recordings including swallows, a Super 8 projector and coins rattling inside a cathedral in Lisbon. But instead of functioning merely as decorative details, those sounds help create a world that feels tactile, unsettled and slightly haunted.

Songs such as 'We earn you burn', 'Wasteland', 'Truth on the loose' and 'How do we live with this' carry an obvious social and political weight, with Berglund's lyrics addressing injustice, patriarchy and war while still leaving room for uncertainty and emotional fatigue.

There's anger here, but also fragility and the occasional suggestion that change might still be possible. Tracks like 'No Room for Darkness', 'Echoes' and 'Looking from Above' suggest a project that's just as interested in aftermath and perspective as it is in direct resistance.

The comparisons to Suicide, Nine Inch Nails and Massive Attack are useful reference points, but 'The eleventh hour' ultimately feels strongest when MäRK's own theatrical instincts take over.

In all, this album is dense, dramatic and deliberately uneasy. MäRK make music for a moment that feels close to breaking point, and 'The eleventh hour' captures that feeling with enough imagination to make the alarm sound strangely beautiful.