Artist: Marduk
Label: Osmose Productions
Release Date: 1993
Rating: 5 Skulls
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Title: Those of the Unlight Artist: Marduk Label: Osmose Productions Release Date: 1993 Rating: 5 Skulls |
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Parm's Review:
I still remember back in 1992 (the days of tape trading and snail mail) receiving a cassette tape (yes, those things) from Dan Swano with a song on it, "The Funeral Seems to be Endless," by Marduk (off their debut album, Dark Endless). Mr. Swano, being a nice guy, was helping to promote bands that recorded at his Unisound Studios. Andreas Axelsson, who handled the vocal duties, happened to be the guitarist in Dan's main project at the time, Edge of Sanity. My interest was peaked, it was very good, but not great and essentially death metal with black vocals.Their follow up, Those of the Unlight, came out when the scene started to flood with interchangeable wannabe evil munchkins everywhere you shook a whitefish. Brutally noisy guitars, no bottom end to its sound, one blazing beat for each song, played by the entire 15 year old population of Norway. The contents of Mom's makeup cabinet and cheap guitars have been in short supply ever since.
This is NOT one of those albums. While clearly a black metal band that left their death metal roots behind, something was different: actual song structures, melody, time changes and confirmation of a bass player (who would have guessed). Black metal rarely carries any emotional weight to its songs, there's no excitement for a riff or certain part coming up and Marduk knew that. If you allow other instruments into the mix, or give the guitar a moment to breathe every now and then, everything improves tenfold. Listen to the fade effect at the beginning of "On Darkened Wings" and the bass parts with no guitars/drums and you'll understand how black metal can be exciting without making your ears bleed. They didn't need keyboards or female vocals to give it some "artsy fartsy" feel. The key was variation and a careful adjustment of the treble knob. I'm not even that much of a black metal fan, for the earlier stated reasons, but this release stands heads and shoulders above almost all of them.
Unfortunately the band started to "devolve" after this album and became more of what a typical black metal band is known for: speed, speed, no variation, a blind eye to those with eardrums and more speed. While I still prefer them over the slew of others that have come and gone through the years, the magic has yet to be rekindled.
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