Marduk | ‘Wormwood’

Marduk at their best were Morgan, B-War, Fredrik and Legion. They looked the part, played heavy, fast and hard, and generally didnt have many ideas above their station. Fredrik Andersson’s performance especially on ‘Panzer Division Marduk’ still takes some beating. You’d think his muscles were splitting the atom, he was going that fast.

In recent years, after something of a mid career lull, Mortuus’ arrival rejuvinated them. ‘Plague Angel’ was fantastic, ‘Rom 5:12′ decent. In that regard, it’s hard not to view this new album as them resting on their laurels a bit - either that or just resting, period.

Opener ‘Nowhere, No One, Nothing’ is intially exciting. Its tumbledown effect of guitar falling upon bass is interesting, and well orchestrated. It’s aggressive and militaristic in exactly the way Marduk made their name. Then ‘Funeral Dawn’ slumps in, and it’s unclear if Marduk even want to be the same band as the one that played the previous song.

Yes, its martial feel does recall efforts from bands like Der Blutharsch or In Slaughter Natives, the bands they’ve sort of fetishised for a while now. Of course there’s that Arditi connection from previous albums, but frankly, Marduk are a metal band, and no amount of arse licking Cold Meat’s roster will make them any better in that area.

It’s back to spuds and porridge with ‘This Fleshy Void’, which pelts along with machinegun delivery but fails to really stand out. It’s here that suspicions over Mortuus’ continuing interest arise. He sounds bored, nowhere near as good as his debut with the band, and nowhere near as inhuman as his previous efforts. It’s a phoned in performance.

So is the rest of the album, until the mindblowingly fantastic ‘Whorecrown’. So good is this track, so brilliant an exposition of raging black metal, that it’s tempting to recommend owning the album on the strength of it. It’s almost perfect. A chilly, jarring note tickles, then all hell breaks loose in a torrent of blastbeats. What a track.

But even the artwork seems a bit odd. Is it just the font, or is the piccy about one step removed from a Sunday evening TV fantasy-drama with Brian Blessed? Yeah, I thought so as well. So it’s not as impressive as it could have been, most especially on the back of two more or less essential albums before it.

To sum it up, apart from ‘Whorecrown’ I wouldnt really cross the road for it. It seems churlish to criticise them for varying their music and influences whenever the thing they used to be most criticised for was not varying their music. But such are the way of these things. It’s clear the band are struggling to retain a single identity. It’s also clear though that they do need that single identity - and not the hotch potch of stuff in here.

3.2 / 5 - Ciaran Tracey ::: 19/10/09