Band:	Marduk
Album:	Serpent Sermon
Style:	Black metal
Release date:	May 25, 2012
A review by:	BitterCOld

01. Serpent Sermon
02. Messianic Pestilence
03. Souls For Belial
04. Into Second Death
05. Temple Of Decay
06. Damnation's Gold
07. Hail Mary (Piss-Soaked Genuflexion)
08. M.A.M.M.O.N.
09. Gospel Of The Worm
10. World Of Blades
11. Coram Satanae [Limited edition bonus]

Hearing that blazing black metalers Marduk had, gasp, evolved or whatever during their careers from the blurring blast beat battery of (occasional guilty pleasure) Panzer Division Marduk, I thought I'd check to see what they are up to nowadays.

Before popping the disk into the tray and hitting play, I came up with a list of expectations:

1 - Ridiculous tempos and blurring blasturbation ahoy. (Check!)
2 - Occasional slower passages to show maturity and development. (Check!)
3 - Horrifying, blasphemous vocals spewing forth praise of Satam? which would be made endlessly more entertaining if the singer had a speech impediment a la Elmer Fudd. Think "Kwist Waping Bwack Metal!*" (Check on gurgling vocals. No particularly amusingly catchy choruses.)
4 - World War II or other movie sound effects to add atmosphere. (Nope. Not today.)

Well, 3 out of 4 ain't bad, and neither is the album.

The saying "be careful what you wish for because you just might get" comes to play here. After the lead in title track, a mediocre affair, the band starts hitting on all cylinders with "Messianic Pestilence". The sub-three minute jolt is followed by another strong track, "Souls For Belial". Well, at least the opening 2 minutes, before the band deviates from the pedal to the metal philosophy which has defined them and slows things down for a while. Truthfully, it just makes the song drag when they cut to half speed and spout "Souls For Belial" ad nauseum. They might have been better off ripping a page from the Panzer Division Marduk playbook, cutting it short and tossing in a WW2 sound effect of some poor bastards screaming after being set ablaze with a flamethrower.

The same "slow it down towards the end" blueprint is also tried in the next song, "The Second Death", which is decent but suffers from using the same approach as the prior track, only not up to the level set by its predecessor.

If "Souls For Belial"/"Second Death" seem a poor execution of trying to shake things up with tempo changes, "Temple Of Decay" is the opposite. The entire track is at a slow pace with some tribal drums, backing vocals, and just a creepy feel. It's a great, mood-altering shift from the generally blazing pace set by the opening trio.

If this review seems to go on too long, well, sorry, but so does the album. While "Damnation's Gold" has some more awesome Marduk moments, it also suffered from inconsistencies, with some forgettable parts.

Serpent Sermon really starts to drag after this. I found myself bored halfway through "Hail Mary (Piss Soaked Genuflection)", checking my watch and thinking, "this album is still going on? There are still another three tracks?"

I felt Exodus went on far too long with the near 80 minute Exhibit B, Serpent Sermon clocks in at a comparatively Jenny Craig-esque 46 minutes, yet feels just as long, overdone, and tiring.

Don't get me wrong, it's a good album with plenty of wardspeed tremolo riffing and "playing card in the spokes of a bicycle" drumming. There are some fantastic riffs, great vocals, and lots of intense moments. Ultimately, as with the tracks "Souls For Belial" and "Into Second Death", Serpent Sermon comes in strong, but gets weaker as it goes? causing it to just drag and go on a bit longer than it should.


*Seriously, when done reading this, go play that track and sing along, gurgling as best you can, substituting R's for W's. You'll never be able to listen to this track with breaking into a smile again.