Style: Black Metal
Primary Emotions/Themes: Black metal with religious influences - Marduk's finest moment
Thoughts: Romans Chapter 5 Verse 12, New International Version: "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all have sinned..."
My history with Marduk is long and involved. They were one of the first black metal bands I got into in my metal journey. I ordered Nightwing and Enslaved's Eld at the same time from my local shop not really knowing much about either band except that they were black metal. My experience with Eld is documented elsewhere (entry 348), but Nightwing was my first experience with intense blast beat driven black metal... the way that only Marduk can do.
The thing that stood out so immensely with Marduk was the vocals and the intensity of the music. They never once let up. Legion was an insane vocalist and the guitars/drums beat me into submission every time I listened. My young mind was blown.
Fast forward a few years and Legion is leaving the band. Needless to say I was highly concerned for the band's future. His voice was an integral part to the experience that was Marduk. Who else was going to sing about my Christ Raping Black Metal?
Enter Mortuus.
I didn't know what to expect with the new vocalist. Plague Angel was a bit of treading water for the band, and didn't do much to sway me to be interested in the band. A few years later I heard the title of their next album and I was intrigued.
Romans is often considered by Christians a fundamental book of the bible. It was written by Paul to the gentiles - those who were not part of the jewish faith. It resonates strongly with people even to this day and is seen as a guide for how to live and how to let christ live through you. Marduk choosing a verse from this book of the bible to be the title of their next album fascinated me to no end.
The opening track is appropriately named: The Levelling Dust. It completely leveled me. The intensity that I expected from the band was back, even more importantly though Mortuus showed what he could really do.
His vocals are unlike any I've heard within black metal or any other genre. They undoubtedly fit the genre, but the way he executes them is entirely unique. He has multiple layers to his vocals. There is this gurgle in his voice that sounds like a mix of turion throat singing and Atilla Csihar's moaned/chanted vocal style. He layers this with a more typical black metal distortion. The end result is something that sounds like a black metal vocalist with undertones and a vibrato. It's hard to describe, but the style is incredibly compelling and gives Marduk a new identity all together.
On top of the vocals the music has taken a huge step up in quality. Not only do we have the expected blast beat driven madness, we also have slower pieces that are quite unheard of from the band. Of course they have done slower songs in the past, but they almost always have sucked... not here. These fucking rip.
The band has also decided to lean into the biblical nature of the title with gregorian chants intermixed as well as some dark ambient passages. This adds another level to Marduk's music that simply has not been present before this (nor after this album).
Rom 5:12 is the finest moment that Marduk has produced to date. The music is challenging, varied, and provokes a lot of thought out of me... not something I would have thought Marduk would ever do. If there is only ever one Marduk album to purchase, this is undoubtedly it.