World Funeral
| World Funeral | ||||
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| Studio album by Marduk | ||||
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Publication |
February 2003 |
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admission |
September and November 2002 |
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| Label (s) | Blooddawn Productions, Regain Records , Soundholic, CD-Maximum | |||
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Format (s) |
CD, LP, Picture Disc |
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Title (number) |
11 |
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running time |
48:14 |
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| occupation |
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Marduk |
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Studio (s) |
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World Funeral is the eighth album by the Swedish black metal band Marduk . It was released in February 2003.
Emergence
In contrast to the previous album La grande Danse macabre , the band took more than nine days to record, which according to guitarist Morgan Håkansson was "a good idea from Peter Tägtgren ". Tagtgren, in whose Abyss Studio World Funeral was recorded in September and November 2002, mixed the album and was also responsible as a sound engineer. Marduk took over the production himself. The album was released in February 2003, followed by a European tour with 31 performances.
Track list
- With Satan and Victorious Weapons - 3:51
- Bleached Bones - 5:20
- Cloven Hoof - 3:26
- World Funeral - 3:31
- To the Death's Head True - 3:58
- Castrum doloris - 3:34
- Hearse - 4:54
- Night of the Long Knives - 5:31
- Bloodletting - 5:49
- Blessed Unholy - 5:02
- Blackcrowned - 2:18
Music style and lyrics
According to Gunnar Sauermann from Hard Rock & Metal Hammer , the music is "hellish noise [...] from the start: it pounds madly, precisely and brutally out of the speakers". His colleague Petra Schurer According to the band moves despite the musical variation by slow passages "[g] rößtenteils [...] both musically and lyrically continue on the Metzel - and blasphemy plane". According to Håkansson, the music needed “a clear sound, otherwise the sound will be pulp”. According to Allmusic's William York , however, the production sounds “squeaky clean” and “very digital”. The album contains a lot of "elegant, technical, yet catchy" riffs. The pace is more varied than usual with Marduk.
The album begins with the traditional piece With Satan and Victorious Weapons , followed by Bleached Bones , "[for Marduk standards a mid-tempo song that reminds of the last album with its hypnotic rhythm and accelerates in the middle part". Cloven Hoof "[g] ibt full throttle again immediately" and is about "a [m] club-footed character from the Bible ". According to Håkansson, the title song is inspired by Slayer and “kept in a different pitch than usual”. To the Death's Head True is, according to Sauermann's description, “[l] outrageous and vicious at a reduced tempo. Black metallic with a touch of mesmerizing doom ”; it is based, according to Håkansson, “on a single riff that has haunted my head for years. Somehow the song turned out to be quite unusual and a bit death-heavy . ” Castrum doloris is“ [s] acral and sublime on the one hand, but also sometimes hellishly groovy . For Marduk something like a ballad in which Legion sings telling stories. ”It is Märk hur vår skugga from the Fredmans epistlar collection by the Swedish composer Carl Michael Bellman , which the band“ simply adapted to our needs ”. Hearse, on the other hand, is "very heavy and contains some faster parts"; the text is based on the horror film Das Böse (in the original Phantasm ) by Don Coscarelli . Night of the Long Knives “sounds [...] raw and angry. A long heavy metal passage in the middle part ”; According to Håkansson, the song embodies Marduk's essence: “Fast and pounding, but never monotonous. So the tempo change towards the middle. ” Bloodletting is described by Sauermann as“ [b] ominous, stomping and ritualistic ”, according to him reminds in places of Nightwing and“ mainly stands on an eerie riff - but very comfortable ”. The song was originally “written for a horror soundtrack. The film never came about, so we changed the lyrics and re-recorded the piece. " Blessed Unholy is a traditional Marduk song and" [d] is irresistible, like 'Slay The Nazarene' or 'Jesus Christ Sodomized' the force of a jackhammer into the brain ”. The last track, Blackcrowned , is “[e] in a dragging instrumental mourning outro”. The band arranged for this the funeral march Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary by Henry Purcell .
reception
According to York, the album sounds amazing and great the first couple of times, but sadly not after that. The "squeaky clean, very digital sounding" Abyss Studio production is tiring and exhausting, and Legion mostly still sounds "like a pirate with laryngitis "; the texts are often "awkward or embarrassing". But the band's "real Achilles heel " is their inability to come up with a bunch of songs that are strong and memorable enough to anchor the extremity they are aiming for. Still, it's not a bad album, it just doesn't reach the level the band has to achieve (consistently and not just with a few songs or on every third album) in order to ever belong to the upper class in Black Metal. For Wolf-Rüdiger Mühlmann from Rock Hard , who rated the album as “lukewarm”, World Funeral marks “the low point of the Legion phase, if not the entire history of the band”. The band was “tired, burned out and lacking in ideas”, because “the Belgian booking agency Metallysee […] took care of a number of assembly line tours” and Marduk therefore “[how] once the Polish death metallers Vader […] for years at every accessible socket ”; Legion “obviously felt unable to provide an unpredictable, 'dangerous' fronter, Basser B. War enriched the band as a part-time Black Metaller more poorly than right, and as a logical consequence of this tangible personnel crisis, this album made its way from middle class song to middle class song. The black metal institution was seemingly dead. ”On the following album Plague Angel, Mortuus had “ led the black metal institution back into absolute evil ”; after his entry, "[t] he phase of weakness [...] seems blown away, the Swedes are once again absolute leaders in the ranks of ruthless black metal combos". According to Watain singer Erik Danielsson, the new line-up (after Legion and B.War were replaced by Mortuus and ex-guitarist Devo Andersson ) "is something that will be far from the failure they became for a while". Nevertheless, according to Robert Müller from Metal Hammer “the departure of the veteran singer was a shock, and it seems to have taken three albums before the old Marduk guard around Morgan Håkansson really understood what an incredibly good Black Metal singer they are was fishing with Funeral Mists Daniel Rosten alias Mortuus ”.
Sauermann, who listened to the album in advance together with other journalists, wrote that it was “hellish noise [...] from the start. This is how Swedish Black Metal has to sound like […]. ”The other press representatives present also liked the album. Cloven Hoof shows "how much Marduk have refined their songwriting". Schurer praised "some thoroughbred, skillfully staged Doom passages" in To the Death's Head True ; In terms of production, the “differentiated, but still refreshingly rough sound is convincing. But all existing further developments are honored: It is difficult to avoid the impression that Marduk in 2003 was not going to the point in a rationally calculated manner. The sheer blind hatred and passionate rage that characterized the early works are missing today. ”Therefore, World Funeral “ may be a high-quality black metal album in terms of playing and composition, but rarely an emotionally stirring Black Metal album ”. They awarded five out of seven points.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b volume. Archived from the original on March 24, 2010 ; accessed on April 8, 2013 .
- ↑ a b c d e Gunnar Sauermann: Marduk . Sweden, death & the devil . In: Hard Rock & Metal Hammer , February 2003, p. 28.
- ↑ a b Petra Schurer: Marduk . World Funeral . In: Hard Rock & Metal Hammer , March 2003, p. 96.
- ^ A b c William York: World Funeral - Marduk. Allmusic , accessed April 10, 2013 .
- ↑ Wolf-Rüdiger Mühlmann: Dissecting table . In: Rock Hard . No. 310 , March 2013, p. 74 f .
- ↑ Ild: Watain ( Memento of 10 April 2008 at the Internet Archive ) 9 June 2005, accessed April 10, 2013.
- ^ Robert Müller: Marduk . Wormwood . In: Metal Hammer , November 2009, p. 110.