VLAD TEPES
One of the earliest LLN acts, Vlad Tepes were also one of the most visible and did much to fly the flag for the circle. As well as giving interviews in a number of fanzines and making three “official” releases, they were notably vocal about the circle itself. Their finale is named simply The Black Legions, and their second demo Celtic Poetry (1994) features the same words on the cover along with the goat skull and pentagram image that would become synonymous with LLN as a whole. In interviews, the group also revealed that many of their lyrics dealt directly with the LLN circle.
Frequently written off, like many LLN bands, as musically clueless, the works of the duo—Wlad (vocals, guitars, drums) and Vorlok (bass, vocals)—often showcase both impressive musicianship and songcraft, particularly on the part of main songwriter Wlad. Though they were undoubtedly “sloppy” players, the fact that most of their songs appear several times in different renditions (completists will find themselves with five or more versions of some key songs) reveals just how much spontaneity the band were capable of.
After releasing their debut cassette (Rehearsal Winter ’93), the band would release three more demo tapes during 1994, the last of which, War Funeral March, was released by Full Moon Productions in a run of a thousand copies, but originally sold so badly that most copies ended up in storage, ultimately to be either binned due to damage or sold off in 2002. Now much sought after, the opus was later released on CD by Embassy Productions, and despite the challenging discordance of the opening track—seemingly there to put off the weak of heart—the four remaining tracks are essential Vlad Tepes material.
Three more demos would follow before the band’s split release with Belkètre, 1995’s March to the Black Holocaust (released on CD by Embassy Productions in a thousand hand-numbered copies), one of the few official releases by the Black Legions and arguably one of the finest black metal splits of all time. Vlad Tepes’ side proves to be raw as hell itself, with both thrash and punk overtones, yet also shows a surprising taste for melody, solos, and even groove during the eight contributions. Another split (Black Legions Metal) would follow in 1996, this time with Torgeist and released on Drakkar Productions, though this proved somewhat less essential and all but one of the songs would appear on the Dans Notre Chute tape a few months later.
1997’s Le Morte Lune was an infinitely more significant effort. With ten tracks (nine previously unreleased), the tape is effectively an album and is well worthy of investigation despite the sound quality being enough to put off even hardened black metal fans. Crank up the stereo and immerse yourself, however, and this proves to be an atmospheric and varied listen, swinging from the melancholic, almost new wave vibe of “I Died From A Vampyric Grief” to the brief aural violence of “Dark War,” seemingly inspired directly by Deathcrush-era Mayhem. A final covers tape (the aforementioned The Black Legions) would see the light of day in 1998 and mark the apparent end of both the band and the circle.
Wlad and Vorlok also played together (along with Vordb) in Black Murder, a band whose more chaotic and violent nature was perhaps not surprising given that sole songwriter Vorlok claimed he only composed “when I want to kill.” Another seemingly short-lived project, in which Wlad dominated and Vorlok played only bass, was Vérmyapre Kommando, whose self-titled demo was based solely around war themes.
BELKÈTRE
Having released demos recorded as Chapel of Ghouls and Zelda, Vordb and Aäkon Këëtrëh settled on Belkètre (supposedly meaning “oath”), and issued three demos in 1993 and 1994 before release March to the Black Holocaust in 1995. Contributing eight tracks of pure malevolence recorded on a four-track recorder, the sound quality has an unusually icy, high-pitched rawness that slices straight into the unconscious. Opening number “Guilty” offers a momentary warning thanks to a combination of tape hiss and feedback, before erupting into some of the nastiest, most extreme black metal yet recorded. Genuinely unsettling in parts, the material includes unrelenting and uncompromising black metal tracks and crude, yet hellishly eerie, instrumentals such as “Hate.”
Two years later a full-length album entitled Ambre Zuerkl Vuordhrevarhtre (spelling varies) was recorded, and, despite being supposedly shared with only five people, soon spread outside of the circle. Notably different in nature from the Vlad Tepes spilt, Ambre is a somewhat less searing listen, boasting less rabidly aggressive material and with a production less harmful to the ears. The psychedelically tinged album opens with a haunting instrumental featuring multilayered guitars that takes hold of the listener and drags them—like a sleeping pill-propelled suicide—into a melancholy, dreamy realm. The first proper song, “A Dark Promise,” proves that the band had made considerable steps in their songwriting, beginning with a swaggering riff and breaking into well-considered leads, adopting something close to a traditional song structure as opposed to a relentless assault.
The seminal Hail Satanas We Are The Black Legions seven-inch by Mütiilation, 1994.
For years a rumor persisted that the duo had committed group suicide (some versions claiming that they’d committed several murders first), but there is no evidence of this and the idea may even have stemmed from Vordb’s words in Black Plague where he talks in somewhat fatalistic terms about his solo project Moëvöt: “Creation, more precisely the claim to creation, is purely human and so undeniably illusive. Only destruction is Satanic and eternal. I’m not a creator but a destructor. My works have no future in this world.”
DARK AMBIENT PROJECTS
“Black ambient” projects were common in LLN and vary massively in nature and quality. Often ridiculously minimal, they have fueled LLN detractors; one notable example is Mogovtre, whose demo, legend states, was recorded by members of Vlad Tepes by inserting a microphone into the anus of either a rat or a Bichon dog. Despite such self-indulgence, some Black Legions ambient projects are notable, perhaps the most acclaimed being the solo efforts of the members of Belkètre—Vordb recording under the Moëvöt moniker and Aäkon Këëtrëh recording under his own pseudonym.
In both cases the music is minimalist, melancholic, and frequently primitive. At times it appears purposely so, such as in the case of Aäkon Këëtrëh, where errors in simplistic linear material are so glaring that one can assume they were either intentional or kept for effect, a point also true of some of the creepy ambient tracks in Belkètre. Throughout the project’s three demos—Journey Into The Depths of Night (1995), Dans La Forêt (1996), and The Dark Winter (1997)—Aäkon Këëtrëh retains a mournful atmosphere, while also advancing in terms of technicality, although don’t go expecting Dream Theater—it’s still pretty primal.
The magnificent March to the Black Holocaust, 1995. A split between two of the most celebrated (today at least) bands within the Black Legions, Vlad Tepes and Belkètre, and one of the few official releases to emerge from the circle.
Also featuring a number of short keyboard and guitar tracks, Moëvöt takes a less fragmented approach and is more chilling in atmosphere, Vordb frequently making use of his vocal range and contributing genuinely impressive clean vocals in chants, often unaccompanied. Meyhna’ch’s solo project, Satanicum Tenebrae, also dipped its toes into dark ambient territories and finally, though arguments over its LLN status continue, Beleth’Rim’s project Amaka Hahina is also worth investigation.
“If we had to be something for ‘Jesus Christ,’ We would be its Last Breath. If We had to be something for ‘mankind,’ its shameful ‘creation,’ We wouldn’t even accept to be its memory … If We had to be something for this ‘world,’ We would be its Last Twilight, an Irreversible Twilight … But all of them know the way of their own end and We are just here to prevent them straying from it.”
—March To The Black Holocaust statement.
33
MARDUK
SWEDEN PART I
“When I think of black metal, I think of Marduk. With Marduk there is no compromise, and they keep on delivering one great album after the other. They are one of the most
intense live bands that I know of, and there’s no fucking bullshit with them. Marduk is krieg!”
—Hváll (Windir and Vreid)
FORMED WITH the ambitious goal of becoming “the most brutal and blasphemous metal act ever,” Marduk have sweated for over two decades to bring blood, darkness, and an unrelentingly ferocious brand of metal to the world, rightfully earning a place as one of Sweden’s most famous—or perhaps more accurately, infamous—black metal bands. Unleashed at the very birth of the nineties, they can be counted among the small number of bands who kept the unholy flame of black metal alive, just a few years before the genre exploded in a wave of church burnings, destruction, and notoriety. Against a tide of increasingly mainstream and inoffensive death and thrash metal, the Swedes brought life once more to the spirit of eighties pioneers such as Hellhammer, Celtic Frost, and particularly Bathory, whose work had profoundly impacted guitarist and founding member Morgan “Evil” Håkansson.
Despite this heritage, Marduk also illustrate the often blurred line between black and death metal (which was exploding in Sweden at the time), and initially leant unequivocally toward what is often referred to as the “Stockholm sound,” popularized by Nihilist, Entombed, and Dismember. Favoring big doomy riffs, pounding, uncomplicated percussion, a sense of morbid groove and a downtuned, crunchy tone, the sub-genre took heavy inspiration from early American acts, a source that Marduk were also drawing upon directly in the forging of their uncompromising vision.
“For me black metal doesn’t have a specific sound,” spits Morgan, a man whose lighting-fast speech mirrors his well-publicized obsession with firepower and military history. “Today bands will say, ‘Oh, we have black metal vocals,’ but what is ‘black metal vocals’? For me it can be any way you want. For me, black metal’s definition is simply extreme music with a Satanic philosophy and belief. We always had—and especially when we began—a lot of death metal influence from real death metal bands like Morbid Angel, early Deicide, Immolation, and Autopsy.”
One of Marduk’s earliest corpsepainted shoots, taken from debut album Dark Endless, 1992.
Another direct source of inspiration—not least in the band’s adoption of corpsepaint—was Swedish vocalist Per “Dead” Ohlin of Morbid and Mayhem fame, with whom Morgan had become friends in the late eighties. Not surprisingly this also led to him becoming well acquainted with Dead’s bandmate Euronymous, which led to visits to his Helvete store in Oslo and even attempts to arrange live shows for Mayhem in Sweden. When Dead died in April 1991, Morgan was one of a very small number of trusted contacts sent a piece of his skull by Euronymous.
“I still have it, it’s like a holy relic you know?” Morgan confirms. “I started corresponding with Dead after he moved to Norway, early ’89, and was in contact with him up until his death. I mean it’s many years ago—and when I look upon it, he was only twenty-one, twenty-two when he committed suicide and how old was I—but I was impressed by him. He had a strong personality and a strong belief. He was an inspiring personality I would say, very serious about what he was doing, but still a very humorous guy. It was probably the most bizarre humor somebody ever had, you know? Very morbid, bad, typical Swedish humor I would say. Euronymous I considered to be a great friend and comrade, we worked a lot together.”
The infamous Fuck Me Jesus demo, originally released on cassette in 1991, and rereleased with this more well-known cover art in 1995.
Marduk’s own recording career would begin shortly after Dead’s demise, with the band’s sole demo Fuck Me Jesus. Opening with a sample from The Exorcist’s notorious “crucifix masturbation scene,” the opus compounded its blasphemous content when re-released on CD some years later thanks to a similarly themed cover illustration that led to bans in at least seven countries. Recorded and produced by the talented Dan Swanö—then known as vocalist of progressive death metal act Edge of Sanity, but soon to be famed for production work at his studio Unisound—the demo proved a considerable hit, earning the sort of impressive sales that are all but impossible in today’s Internet age.
“We got in contact with a lot of bands and it was the days when you could sell thousands of copies of demos,” Morgan explains. “Everything was exciting and there was a lot of great music coming out. We formed a strong relationship with people all around the world, with zines and printed magazines. It was a time when we had a strong vision to push the boundaries beyond what had already been done, to go one step ahead. We had a very strong devotion and concept and let that inspiration carry us wherever it might. Some people loved it, some people hated it—that’s the way it’s always been. Dan Swanö had been a friend since the early years, his studio was the focal point in this area… in the three or four years after that bands were traveling from all over the world to record at his small studio.”
The same year also saw the recording of a seven-inch entitled Here’s No Peace (the title came from a drawing Dead had sent Morgan), which would have been the band’s first official release had it not ultimately been shelved until 1997. The band also played their first live shows, which also had a hint of Dead’s destructive stage presence about them.
“We delivered bloodshed and violence,” Morgan explains. “We mostly played in our hometown and the area around, and it was very strange because people weren’t used to what we were doing at all. You know, we cut ourselves up and bled on the audience, it was quite intense and kind of a shock for a lot of people. But we got a really great following from the shows we did at that time.”
Through a combination of explosive live shows and recorded material, Marduk steadily built a name for themselves and were soon signed by Swedish label No Fashion Records, who released their debut album, Dark Endless, in the closing weeks of 1992. Featuring a second guitarist in the form of one Magnus “Devo” Anderson, the recording proved even more deathly than the demo, but though the band were satisfied with the finished product—despite having to record it in four days due to a limited budget—they were ultimately rather less than happy with their record deal. Following an alleged problem regarding payments, they decided to jump ship for the far more established French label Osmose Productions.
In September 1993, the band released their sophomore album, Those Of The Unlight, a record that saw a major lineup shift, with original bassist Richard Keim and vocalist Andreas Axelsson departing, the former being replaced by B. War (Bogge Svensson) and the latter—more surprisingly—being replaced by Marduk’s drummer Joakim Bothberg.
“We had this lineup change right before the recording because we were not satisfied with the vocalist due to a general lack of interest—not turning up to rehearsals [for example] … So we decided to let him go and we hadn’t even decided which vocalist to use when we began to record the album. In the end our drummer did a tryout for the vocals and it worked out very well. He actually put down three-quarters of the album the day he decided to become the vocalist. The whole album was recorded in three days and mixed on the fourth—working fast and furious you know?” Morgan laughs. “We didn’t know another way to work, it wasn’t like today when you spend ages in the studio, we just went in and did it.”
Joakim’s vocals proved far closer to the higher-pitched, “screeched” approach quickly becoming established within black metal, and the musical content of the album also largely mirrored such a transition. Gone were almost all “death metal” elements, the album dropping much of the raw brutality of its predecessor for a more ethereal atmosphere, greater melody, and the sort of urgent, treble-heavy riffing that was fast becoming the hallmark of Scandinavian black metal. Perhaps most shocking of all was the inclusion of an emotive instrumental named “Echoes From The Past,” which utilized not only clean guitars but also keyboards.
Remaining as productive as ever, the band released their third album, Opus Nocturne, at the end of 1994, a year that also saw them embark on their first international tour, along with labelmates Immortal. The album introduced another significant stylistic shift, the Swedes now prese
nting a far icier and more aggressive sound, characterized by thin, slicing guitars, an even more treble-heavy tone and insanely high-paced, blasting percussion. The reason for this shift was fairly straightforward, coinciding directly with the addition of new drummer Fredrik Andersson and the loss of second guitarist Devo.
“We decided to keep Joakim as the frontman and get a new drummer,” explains Morgan. “Fredrik was an even more intense drummer and more hard-hitting, so we increased the speed, because we had already decided to become faster and go one step ahead from what we had done before. Joakim was really happy to just focus on vocals and it also meant we got a drummer who was really thrilled to be in the band and had that hunger.”
The album was the last to be recorded with Dan Swanö and was also notable for the inclusion of the track “Materialized in Stone,” a discarded Mayhem song title and the final direct tribute to fallen comrade Dead, following the aforementioned “Here’s No Peace” and a song entitled “Burn My Coffin” on Those of the Unlight, taken from another unused song title that Dead had mentioned in correspondence with Morgan.
1995 brought a CD re-release of their demo, which caused a fair bit of controversy due to its title and artwork, with distributors refusing to handle the release in Germany, Austria, France, England, Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland. The band also gave a somewhat controversial interview featuring politically insensitive comments, which led to German magazines moving to boycott the band. More constructively, 1995 saw the band head to The Abyss studio—owned by Hypocrisy frontman Peter Tägtgren, with whom the group were already close—to re-mix Those of the Unlight. The band also recorded their next album there, namely 1996’s Heaven Shall Burn … When We Are Gathered, whose title pays homage to Bathory’s song “Dies Irae” and the line “Even the heavens shall burn when we are gathered.”
Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult Page 46