Marduk – Plague Angel
Regain Records – 2004
By Adam McAuley
Marduk spends the majority of this album blasting through at lightning speeds making for a somewhat chaotic listening experience. It would seem as though this would imply a convincing and enthralling listen, but it all gets washed away a bit by the one-sided nature of the music and absence of intricacies and interesting touches that make later albums by
Emperor, for example, so good. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what’s missing here, but maybe
Marduk just aren’t passionate enough about their music to make me completely interested.
After some solid, but unspectacular tracks bursts forth the second longest track here, “Perish In Flames”, which attempts to sustain a really evil atmosphere and offers contrast to the frenetic blasting taking up a large majority of the album. I’m a fan of the type of music
Marduk are playing, it’s just that they seem to get bogged down in uniformity and repetitiveness. I’m sure people who enjoyed the band’s previous works will find much to like here, however, as the experience is indeed searing and frenetic. The other long song, the closing track “Blutrache”, is a decent piece and closes off
Plague Angel in epic fashion.
So overall, a reasonably solid experience. If they could incorporate a few more twists and turns into their songs and up the complexity, or add additional textures or something, I might like this band more, but as it is
Marduk are an outfit I should love, but only like at most.
6.5/10
Official Regain Records website
Official Blooddawn Productions website
Official Marduk website
