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Marduk: Warschau

17/11/08 || theProphet

As I sit here listening through “The Age of Nero”, Satyricon’s latest effort, it suddenly occurs to me that there hasn’t really been any good black metal releases in 2008, has there? I mean last year, Satan obviously made a goatsee and covered the world in his most abominable filth. We got to hear new albums by bands such as Nifelheim, Watain, Deathspell Omega, Shining and many more. We also got a great album from Marduk and coincidentally, Marduk’s just what this review’s gonna be about. How’s that for a mighty transition, just like that?

Anyhow, when Marduk turned old enough to drive a moped, have sex and go to jail in Sweden, namely fifteen, they decided to celebrate by releasing a limited edition live recording, made in their favourite city: Warsaw, or in the grimmer language that is German, Warschau.

Yes, that was one sentence…

So what does Marduk have to offer in a live setting? Pretty much, at least musically, as that is all I’m able to scrutinize on this here audial recording. Marduk had up until year 2005 released about a thousand albums and eps, so naturally they have quite the catalogue of songs to choose from when establishing their setlist. It’s also quite incredible how thick Marduk manage to sound despite the fact that they only use one guitarist on stage. This becomes most obvious during the slower songs, like the crushing “Seven Angels, Seven Trumpets” or the concerts highlight, “Bleached Bones”, heavier than Mr. Creosote and as evil as the Bishop of Bath and Wells.

Performance-wise, everything is solid, as to be expected by musicians who’s been in the game as long as the members of Marduk. Morgan leaves nobody wishing for a second guitar player, Devo shows his ableness with the bass, and is even given some moments to shine, very nice. Also, Emil Dragutinovic is one of my absolute favourite fast drummers. His blastbeats are perfect and he sounds like a hard-hitter for sure (okay I admit it, I know nothing about drums or how to play them, I know that I really like this though). I’m very sorry that Emil later chose to leave the band, because to me, it’s obvious that he’s a really talented drummer.

However, this show really belongs to one man, and one man only, namely vocalist Mortuus, who had just joined the band about a year prior for the recording of the very solid “Plague Angel”. He’s a real fucking monster, people. For fuck’s sake he even manages to make the chit-chatting in between the songs sound way more evil than your average black metal band. Perhaps-not-so curiously, he sounds his best on the songs from “Plague Angel”, the album he had contributed to himself. Listen to “Throne of Rats”, for example, or the already mentioned “Seven Angels, Seven Trumpets” and be amazed. Truly one of the absolutely best black metal vocalist ever.

There are some downsides however. The most apparent one, in fact, the only one I can think of right now, is the album length. Having seventeen songs on your record is a very safe way of ensuring that not all of them is going to be good. So is also the case here, the quality is not exactly top-notch all the time and also, another problem becomes quite apparent; the fact that Marduk do sometimes lack in variation. There are some slower passages, but these are quite few and far between, otherwise it’s just full on turbo speed. In fact I wrote a short poem about it:

From the first song to the last,
Marduk plays extremely fast.

and then I even translated it to Swedish:

Utan någon längre rast,
spelar Marduk i all hast.

Now where’s my scholarship?

In conclusion, “Warschau” certainly has its spots, yet it’s been quite a while since I heard a spotless live album. What this shows the most however, is that Marduk is a real solid band that has written some awesome songs over the years. Just after releasing this, Marduk uncovered their greatest album yet, “Rom 5:12”, and I for one am convinced that Marduk is not slowing down or getting tired in the least.

7 rituals of darkness out of 10.

Information
Released: 2005
Label: Regain Records
Website: www.marduk.nu
Band
Mortuus: vocals
Morgan: guitars
Devo: bass
Emil: drums

Tracklist
01. The Hangman of Prague
02. Seven Angels, Seven Trumpets
03. Slay the Nazarene
04. Azrael
05. Burn My Coffin
06. Panzer Division Marduk
07. Blutrache
08. Bleached Bones
09. The Black…
10. Steel Inferno
11. On Darkened Wings
12. With Satan and Victorious Weapons
13. Throne of Rats
14. To the Death’s Head True
15. Sulphur Souls
16. Warschau
17. Wolves

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