Marduk Christraping Black Metal

0 views

Skip to first unread message

Rita Seliba

unread,

Aug 3, 2024, 6:00:50 PM8/3/24

to causondipos

Reprint, 700x swamp green with heavy black splatter 12" (180g) in a black poly-lined innersleeve; gatefold, full-color printed on 350g carton with high-gloss lamination, all assembled in a plastic overbag.

Osmose Productions in cooperation with Blooddawn Productions are proud to present the reissue of Marduk's classic live album Germania! Recorded back in 1996 and being one if the first extreme metal live album being done!
Original released in 1997 and since long sold out and out of print. When released creating havoc with its intense power and ferocity!
Now brought for in a Nov 2019 re-mastered version ready to be available again on digital forum as well as on cd and lp! Death to peace!

This killer live recording was recorded in France during "The World Panzer Battle Tour". Originally released via Regain Records, this killer Marduk live show is finally made available again on Back On Black.

It's been 5 years, but it was worth the wait! "Memento Mori", the follow-up album of "Viktoria" is pure MARDUK, from start to finish! Ten tracks of relentless, uncompromising, gritty and hard Swedish black metal! "Memento Mori" is available as Deluxe Gatefold LP (with alternative cover artwork, ultra clear-black extra-heavy splatter vinyl, DIN A4 8-page booklet, DIN A2 poster, art print - limited to 2000 units worldwide and not available in every country), regular Gatefold LP (180g vinyl, lyric sheet), Ltd. CD Mediabook and digital album.

Panzer Division Marduk is the sixth studio album by Swedish black metal band Marduk. It was recorded and mixed at The Abyss in January 1999 and released in June 1999 by Osmose Productions. The theme of the album is fire, as Nightwing was blood, and La Grande Danse Macabre (the band's next studio album) would be death, forming a trilogy of "Blood, Fire, and Death", Marduk's vision of what black metal is, unending grimness (as well as a tribute to the Bathory album Blood Fire Death). Panzer Division Marduk was the last Marduk release by Osmose Productions.

The original album cover features a photo of the Swedish version (Stridsvagn 104) of the British Centurion Mk5 tank. The 2008 reissue of the album featured a Panzer VI E "Tiger" on its cover, reinforcing the Germanic World War II theme of the album. The internal sleeve pictures a tank column triumphant across a city in ruin: this is the Red Army across a destroyed Berlin in 1945.

Swedish black metal, like its melodeath gay cousin, is far from a popular style among black metal elitists, it seems. However, I think if they had a taste of Marduk's "Panzer Division Marduk", their icy hearts would melt "in the essence of the unholy flames".

Once seen as black metal's answer to Deicide's "Legion", Marduk know how to add just the right amount of melody to their blackened death metal attack, and when the brutality takes over, it's total fucking devastation! The vocalist, ironically styled "Legion", manages to incorporate both a guttural growl that would not seem out of place on an old Suffocation or Warkvlt album, as well as a more shrill, high-pitched shriek one would almost expect to find on Demonecromancy or Darkthrone's early work.

The guitars are, thankfully, are not the chugging repetition of most Gothenburg metalcore bands, nor are they the predictable Tim Burton inspired harmonic minor chord progressions used and abused by Swedeath bands and their boring descendants. There are actually REAL RIFFS on "Panzer Division Marduk", imagine that.

And some are kick ass riffs, at that. They never beat a riff to death like droning "war metal" bands would do, incorporating just enough variation to make the album interesting and, at the same time, maintaining each part sufficiently similar to ensure that the music on "Panzer Division Marduk" remains both tight and cohesive.

Marduk deliver, with "Panzer Division Marduk", one of the most intense black metal blasting frenzies ever conceived, easily surpassing Deicide's pathetic "Legion" and various other faux intense gimmick bands (Immortal, Malevolent Creation, Cryptopsy, Belphegor).

Marduk are no novices when it comes to releasing ground-breaking black metal albums, as they had already showed the Norwegian "big brothers" what they were capable of with "Dark Endless" and "Those of the Unlight".

The drumming is great, demonstrating Fredrik's versatility behind a kit. He is a very able blast beat drummer, and is also very quick on the double kick. Something that also impressed me were his drum fills - not a single piece of his kit goes untouched in a given song. A bit pretentious, maybe, but it adds some flair to each track, and contradict the assertion that Marduk play fast to "overcompensate" for an alleged lack of technical skills - as if Marduk never wrote slower pieces ("Echoes from the Past", "Materialized in Stone", "On Darkened Wings", etc.).

The riffs themselves, while hard to make out at first given the speed of most tracks, are excellent and absolutely black metal, unlike most of what comes out of the Swedish "black metal" - read: warmed over speed metal - scene. You can find some Vermin influences (on "Beast of Prey"), some Burzum (on "Blooddawn"), some early Sewer (on "Scorched Earth") and even some Sacramentum (on "Christraping Black Metal").

My only real complaint would probably be the bass. There's no stroke of originality, and it's pretty content in following note per note Morgan's superb guitar work, thus ends up being overshadowed by it. But it is audible and easily discernible, and that's a positive. Regardless, it is only a small detail - "Panzer Division Marduk" will slay you before you can scream "Black, fearsome and grim and mighty"!