There are a few things in life that are certain:
Memento Mori : remember that you will die
Prima spectacula mala erunt – the opening acts will be bad
Mortuus pugnabit – Mortuus will get angry
There is another fact, which is that if we mention Marduk in casual conversation, it is very likely that they will appear again in Croatia.
Basically, they come to Croatia almost every three years. They are one of the most active bands on the black metal scene in general. Their track record speaks for themselves. But I’ll get to them in time.
The venue for the ritual is Boogaloo, where Marduk plays for the first time. As mentioned before in my other concert reviews it does still lands in the hit or miss category. Since it was a Wednesday, the doors were already open at 6:00 PM, which meant that those of us who work in the middle shift went straight to the venue and stood in line in the freezing cold.
To my surprise, the line wasn’t that long and we made our way into the club quite quickly to rummage through the merch offered by the bands. As announced, Sumus Diabolus Incarnatus from France started at 18:30 and that’s where things went to hell, not in a positive way.
If I learned anything from their performance, it’s that the French language and black metal just don’t go together, at least the way the said band performed it. The vocals look like Pest from Gorgoroth from AliExpress accompanied by a rather raw sound and loud vocals, which was more irritating than anything else.
There were some attempts of contact with the audience, but, honestly, the third of us who filled the space of the venue didn’t know if the vocalist was reciting some shit in French or trying to start a dialogue with us in bad English.
The bassist seemed lost for half the show, staring at the guitarist or drummer to see where they were in the song. The other half of the show he was trying to imitate the crab walk that Abbath does, poorly.
The songs we heard that night were solid in themselves, but the sound they had didn’t work for them; too loud vocals and quite quiet guitars. The funniest thing was that they potraited themselfs as some tr00 black metal for 45 minutes and then asked to take a selfie with us in the audience. Maybe this is some French gimmick that I don’t understand, or maybe this is French Spinal Tap. Go figure.
They mercifully retreated from the stage, where another band, Irae from Portugal, immediately got to work preparing their equipment in full make-up and gear. Unlike the previous band, Irae actually has a solid track record; they’ve been around since 2002 and have 6 albums under their belt, with Assim na Terra como no Inferno released in 2002 via Signal Rex label.
More precisely, he has 6 albums under his belt because this is a one-man band and unfortunately that will be very obvious to us during the performance.
Although Irae initially seemed like a better band than the last one, whose name I dare not rewrite (nor Copy-Paste), their songs are too long and rely on minimalism, which is why half of their performance gave us the impression that they were playing the same song the whole time. The drummer (who looks like he plays in a Motorhead tribute band) keeps more or less the same tempo like a drunkard throughout the entire performance. The only person on stage who did a good job was Diogo Santana on bass, who also plays in Corpus Christi and I believe he would rather be there than with us that night. His bass had a piercing sound and played interesting notes in this heavier minimalism, at least to kill the boredom we endured through another 45 minute slug.
I honestly don’t know how much these bands are paying to be on tour or how many times they provided oral sex services to the tour manager at Massive Music, but for 35 euros to put up with bands like this is pathetic.
Bands like this, given their low quality, have no business being on a poster with a name like Marduk, let alone sharing the stage for 20+ dates on a tour. I’m aware of how the business works these days when it comes to tours and festivals, but bands like this don’t live up to the value of the tickets people pay for.
Excuse the rant. Let’s go to the third band.
Doodswens , unlike previous bands, we had already seen in 2023 when they were the opening act for Gorgoroth in the same venue. Just like last time, we were treated to a ritualistic show with candles, animal and human skulls and burning incense. In short, they stunk up the entire stage and the first three rows in the audience.
All kidding aside, the whole candlelight opening performance would make more sense if the music that followed sounded like something of worth.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, not entirely. While the music behind Doodswens is more sonically savvy, in a normal world this would be an opening band with an interesting visual that’s still based on minimalism, but has interesting ideas, and I’d be lying if the band’s main boss, Inge van der Zon, wasn’t rocking the drums and was a sight to behold in her own right.
Her vocals, unfortunately, not so much. She relies on very high-pitched screams that quickly become more like white noise than anything else. The drums, on the other hand, carry the entire performance while the other two members on guitar and bass barely would move or take a step. Maybe out of fear that their altar with lit candles will collapse.
Then I would really have something else to write about.
Not a bad performance in all respects, but after testing our patience during the past two bands, Doodswens were also on the precipice of falling into dead abyss of boredom.
After their performance we had a 30 minute wait for Marduk. While the altar was removed, the stage was cleaned and almost all the drums were disassembled and reassembled so that Bloodhammer could beat the soul out of them once more.
While we waited, there was something that sounded like a live audio feed of the dead monks singing as the Boogaloo club slowly filled in. Honestly, I was expecting more people, but the workday has taken its toll.
Finally, the Babylonian deity has come to save our ears from mediocrity. This is the fifth time I’ve watched them, from the ROM 5:12 era in 2007 until today.
For this part of the tour, the band decided on just three albums: Plague Angel, the aforementioned ROM 5:12 album, and their latest album Memento Mori, released in 2023. Conceptually, it makes sense because it forms an unofficial trilogy of death, at least with Mortuus on the microphone.
To the great joy of the photographers in the front row, we were greeted by a damn cloud from the smoke machine as the entire band rushed onto the stage with a slight delay of about ten minutes and kicked off with the song The Leveling Dust, immediately followed by Warchau and new single Shovel Beats Spectre.
The sound system was pretty solid to begin with, especially on slower songs like Imago Mortis and Womb of Perishableness where everything was clearly audible. The problems arose on harder songs like Steel Inferno where the things started to slightly come apart and we had a similar situation in Vintage in 2022 where Mortuus threw the microphone at the beginning of the third song(Those of the Unlight if memory still works). That didn’t happen but as a consolation prize we saw Mortuus arguing with the sound engineer and throwing things around the stage.
At Vintage, one monitor got screwed up, this time two fell off the stage.
But there is a valid reason, to some extent. The sound in the front row sometimes seemed very scattered, as it usually is in Boogaloo, and then you have moments where you look at Mortuus confused, not knowing where he is in the song. That scenario happened on more than a few songs, some situations were to the point where you had the impression that the whole band was struggling, similar to the situation from 3 years ago. Bloodhammer on drums had to reset parts of the song with a transition so that everyone could find each other. An effective procedure, but for those of us who know those songs by heart, we are literally watching a band doing fuckups on their own material.
We also had an interesting sight where their relatively new bassist Simon was a backing vocalist on the song Cold Mouth Prayer; something like that hadn’t happened since Hypocrisy’s Peter Tägtgren was the live guitarist in 1996 and 1997. Unfortunately, Simon didn’t quite get the hang of it, his voice didn’t match the song at all and he often faltered the parts he had to sing. I guess there’s a reason Simon is still considered a session bassist, he doesn’t have the vibe or sonic presence of the previous bassists like Devo and Lindholm.
Despite that, the concert was satisfactory to a degree, but still nowhere near the previous concerts at Močvara. I just wish we didn’t have to endure two hours of boring bands that kills your will to wait for the headliner.
We have seen better days, that fact applies to the audience, and also to Marduk.
Setlist
The Levelling Dust
Warschau
Shovel Beats Scepter
Steel Inferno
Marching Bones
Blood of the Funeral
Cold Mouth Prayer
The Hangman of Prague
Imago Mortis
Throne of Rats
Womb of Perishableness
Blutrache
Encore
The Blond Beast
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