NB! Please note, this interview was conducted while Legion still was a member of Marduk.

INVITATION TO THE END OF THE WORLD  

Once again Marduk move the cannons into position with their new declaration of war "World Funeral"

Marduk have long since written their name into metal history as the biggest and most influential black metal band from Sweden. But the quartet carries on, unaffected by their success, with issuing one strong  release after the other and since the latest full-length "La Grande Danse Macabre", the band has released the box set "Blackcrowned", the 7" ep "Slay the Nazarene" and an appetizer on the forthcoming album in the form of the single release "Hearse". The band is now ready with "World Funeral" that continues where "La Grande Danse Macabre" left off while it also shows an obvious development in the band. Marduk's vocalist Legion calls me up one evening shortly after hours in his tattoo shop and from the beginning he displays great excitement for the band's eight album.

"Every time we have recorded a new album we have had the feeling of achieving the result that we wanted, but with "World Funeral" that feeling was stronger than ever before. The production is better on the new album compared to all our previous releases, and when we finished the recordings of "World Funeral", we realised that this album contains all the elements that were lacking on "La Grande Danse Macabre". And up to that point we didn't know that the previous album lacked anything, haha! I think a big part of the reason is that we recorded and mixed "La Grande Danse Macabre" in nine days whereas we paid Peter Tägtgren in advance for a month of recording time in Abyss Studios this time around – and we have practically been working night and day. When we were done with recording the album, we went home and listened to it and got that distance to it all before we went back to the studio to mix the album, and it gave us a completely new and refreshing perspective on the tracks before we had to complete them. It was a much more intense working procedure this time and it has resulted in us achieving a much better and more thorough result with "World Funeral" than what was the case with "La Grande Danse Macabre". I also think that we can relax much more from now on when we can release our material through our own label Blooddawn Productions and license it to Regain Records compared to when we were on Osmose. There is no longer any pressure from a company demanding that we release a new album before a deadline laid down by them, and the little money that is possible to earn in this business goes into our own pockets instead of some company. Obviously, it also has an effect on our music that we only have to be answerable to ourselves and that we do not have to satisfy some label that demands a certain approach before they are going to release it."

WE CAN NOW DO WHAT WE WANT!

#Following Marduk's split with Osmose and their decision to release their music through their own label Blooddawn Productions, the members use a lot more time on the business aspects of playing in a band but they have not lost their resolve – on the contrary.

"I'll be the first one to admit that my hair has probably turned grey here and there after we decided to release Marduk through Blooddawn, haha! But it's definitely all worth it as we are now in full control of what we're doing and we can release ten albums in a row that sound just like "Panzer Division Marduk" if we want to. There are no longer any people who are telling us what are supposed to play to satisfy them and give them a product that can sell a lot of copies. Just look at the Celtic Frost album "Cold Lake". That is a perfect example of what can happen when you succumb to label pressure. Of course, that will never happen for Marduk but all the labels who contacted us after the split with Osmose had the same opinion about what product they wanted before they would sign us, so we would basically have ended up in a similar situation with the new labels as we experienced with Osmose. That was why we changed to Blooddawn and that is without doubt the best thing we have done for Marduk."

#Another thing Legion is proud of is their new drummer Emil Dragutinovic who has replaced Fredrik Andersson. Fredrik has been a part of Marduk since "Opus Nocturne" but at the end of 2001 he quit the band.

"At the end, Fredrik seemed to lack interest in Marduk and that was sort of an anti-climax compared to the enthusiasm we felt about writing new music and blowing people away in venues across Europe. So it was best for everyone that he left the band. We knew that it would only be a question of time before we had to find a new drummer but we wanted to wait and see how things went out. So we had to play a concert in Sweden where with two local support bands, and we decided to check them out before we had to go backstage and make everything ready for our own concert. We saw Erik play and we were surprised to put it mildly and knew instantly that we had probably already found our new drummer. We invited him for an audition in our rehearsal room and it went better than we had expected. He joined the band immediately and received his 'baptism of fire' when we had to play a festival. So far he had only tried playing for 60-100 people, but there were several thousands and he almost shit his pants from anxiety when we went on stage, haha! But he has pretty much grown used to it and delivers an amazing piece of work on "World Funeral."

FREE REIN FOR ALL IDEAS

#Legion is right in saying that Erik delivers an amazing job on the record but that goes for the rest of the band too. "World Funeral" is more varied than the previous album in both music and lyrics.

"The last three albums have been concept records with clear guidelines for what reason we decided to do an album without rules this time around. When we wrote "Panzer Division Marduk" we chose to make an album that consisted solely of blastbeats, and "La Grande Danse Macabre" was meant to be a heavy album, but this time there was not going to be any guidelines or a common denominator for the tracks. All those tracks that were good enough would end up on the album, and it has given us a more varied release but at the same time it has also provided more insight into how many different ideas we work with when we write our material. It works better than we had expected and we are already working on tracks for the next two Marduk albums. We never take a breather even though we have an album out, and that is because we are so enthusiastic about the music. And that is also the reason why we play live so much. But to return to the album: we have not limited ourselves this time and that also goes for the lyrics. "Hearse" is for instance based on the horror movie "Phantasm" while the title track "World Funeral" is based on a Christian prophecy concerning the black death, the plague. I have re-written the original text that was formulated by a Swedish bishop. He wrote than you would be struck by the plague for sure if you ate too much, slept for too long or just took a nap during the day, and although that in itself is pretty hilarious he actually succeeded in convincing the local population, haha! But if you worked hard, only ate what was absolutely necessary and worked for little money, you would be a good Christian and would then not be struck by plague. That is a good example of how absurd Christianity is! Perhaps you can say that there has always been a red thread in the lyrics for the fact that they primarily deal with death and blood, but it is and has always been the essence of Marduk and that will not change.”

-->> Conducted and written by Bo.