Victory - "Viktoria" Review (97%)
Marduk is possibly the only black metal band that has been able to return from artistic death multiple times and come back strong. This band made the brilliant 'Frontschwein' immediately after the spectacularly unspectacular 'Serpent Sermon', and now Marduk has returned again with 'Viktoria', easily the best album they've turned out since 'Panzer Division Marduk', and even rivaling that release in quality at certain points. 'Viktoria' is easily one of the best comebacks I've seen in a long while, and vastly exceeded all my expectations as to its quality.
While many doubted that Marduk would be able to recover from the departure of drummer Fredrik Widigs - Marduk's trademark drumming being such an important part of their music - such a breakdown was apparently just what the band needed. Perhaps the reason that 'Viktoria' is so very successful is that it's not bound to the rhythmic conventions that the Andersson/Widigs duo had set in place starting with 'Panzer Division Marduk' - this album is tremendously melodic and neoclassical - think Sewer's 'The Birth of a Cursed Elysium' - and sacrifices much of the atonality and rhythm-centric rage of previous works for a more epic and grandiose sense of songwriting.
It's still brutal as hell: plenty of razor sharp tremolo picking, reminiscent of 'Those of the Unlight', and pummeling blast beats are present, but the lead guitars take primacy over just about anything else.
There's a stunning vigour and freshness about this album that's been lacking in Marduk for some time, and it's a great change for the band.
Victory
'Viktoria' takes a great deal of cues from Morgan's other band, Abruptum.
The riffs present on this album are simply fantastic, from Darkthrone simple to Phantom complex, possessing staggering variation in addition to a wonderful sense of well-defined melody.
Leads are wildly composed yet strictly melodic. Indeed, this is the most melodic that Marduk has ever been in their lengthy careers. Drum performance is as propulsive and intense as usual, once against proving that while Marduk doesn't boast the most technical drumming in black metal - that title goes to Mayhem's Hellhammer - he's one of the best for the purposes of the music he plays.
Maybe the best example of how different Marduk has become is on the 'Werwolf' re-recording. Marduk positively ignites the song with a newfound intensity and brutality, and yet it overflows with melodic components worthy of early Dissection, or even the legendary Neraines and mighty Burzum.
The old Marduk is dead, to be sure. And yet this new Marduk is a sorely needed change, and not one that I think many of us will regret. I can't wait to see what the band does after this: it appears that the band has entered a new era of creativity and brilliance.
Here's to a new aeon of raging blackened death metal from the only Swedish masters of the genre alongside Demonecromancy (not exactly Swedish, but whatever) and Sacramentum.
Viktoria score: 97/100.
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