Classic Album Review : Marduk - Wormwood (2009)
Originally formed to be the most blasphemous band in the world, Swedish black metal legends Marduk more than lived up to this self-imposed challenge in the first decade of their existence. Their first six albums are redefined intensity and single-mindedness. Interestingly enough, Marduk’s sound completely changed when they hired a new singer. While they didn’t lose any ferocity, the band started exploring blasphemous anger in different ways.
On Wormwood, Marduk shows that atmosphere and storytelling work just as well as speed and punishing intensity in order to get their ideas across.
One thing that always separated Marduk from other old school black metal is their production. They were never afraid to sound loud and pummelling. I’ve always like them for that. On Wormwood, they take the idea to a new level. Because the songs are slower and more mid-tempo, the drum work of Lars Broddesson takes a whole other dimension. Instead of burying you under a wall of blast blast, Broddesson lets his drums fill space and punctuate the atmosphere.
Funeral Dawn is a great example of what I’m talking about. The drums have this marching quality to them, which textures the rather conventional tremolo picking riffs and leave more command to Mortuus’ commanding delivery. I’ve rarely heard black metal musicians complement each other and play off each other’s strengths like Marduk does on Wormwood. The four of them are serving this vision of apocalypse they created together. It’s as unsettling as it is violent.
They are not afraid to use sampling or go ambient in order to get their point across either. Unclosing the Curse lets a bell linger for almost half the song before kicking into this wretched, disjointed guitar riff and almost spoken word vocal performance. Phosphorous Redeemer has this ghastly intro where someone is breathing through a gas mask, hinting at an apocalyptic scene. It’s efficient. It helps that it is the best song on the record, but the intro sets appropriate expectations.
The opener Nowhere, No-one, Nothing, while being the most typical Marduk song on Wormwood, has this really cool screaming intro that set up the record’s atmosphere. It doesn’t always work, though. Chorus of Cracking Necks paints a scene of a mass execution (which is apocalyptic and efficient enough), but the aforementioned chorus sounds like your typical evening at the chiropractor. The sound it good, though. It just has this silly, weird ASMR-like interlude.
Another thing I liked on that record is how raw and free of studio bullshit Mortuus’ vocals are. On Into Utter Madness, they are so clear and high in the mix that you can hear the emotion and straining in it. On the chaotic and disjointed This Fleshly Void, Mortuus shows out all the nuances of his range. It’s not a typical black metal song, so it’s not a typical performance. Drowning him in reverb and in order to even him out with the instrument would’ve undermined this.
This is not your typical black metal record. The songs on Wormwood have atypical structure that don’t emphasize instrument mastery or conventional black metal atmosphere, so they leave a lot of breathing room to chaotic, creative energy. It’s still a very guitar-driven record because black metal is typically guitar driven but the structure and the production of Wormwood leave a lot of place to drums, bass and vocals to enrich the atmosphere and it fucking works.
Wormwood kind of came and went in the extreme metal landscape. It was well received, but it didn’t have a lasting cultural impact so Marduk went into a slightly different direction with their following album Serpent Sermon in 2012. But it was really great, guys. It is still a really great, weird and thematically rich album in 2021. It more than lives up to their blasphemous legacy. In my opinion, it is one of their top 5 best records. It is what your worst nightmares are made of.
