Uninspired Old Thrash

Marduk has been around a very long time. From their first release in the early 1990s, they’ve lasted all the way to the new age of heavy music. 2018 proves to be a big year for Marduk as they released yet another album, Viktoria.

The band’s sound has impressively not changed too much since their first few installments. Although consistency is something to applaud at times, here it feels a bit repetitive and cyclical. Marduk has a sound that merges hardcore punk with thrash and death metal. That combination yields great things in a lot of cases, but on Viktoria, it’s just a bland furthering of more of the same.

“Werwolf” begins the LP in a decent fashion. The song is impactful, driving and consistent in guitar and drum patterns. It makes a lot of sense that every song on this album is under five minutes because of the fast pace, but even the two minute “Werwolf” gets boring. This could be an argument about 2017/2018 thrash as a whole, but it is a genre that has been done so many times and if a band fails to do something new with it, they fail to stand out; and that is unfortunately where Marduk falls with “Werwolf” and so many others.

Viktoria presses on with “June 44,” which also sounds rather uninspired. However, it’s followed by some of the most promising tracks on the album. One of which is “Equestrian Bloodlust,” which contains effective sound cues such as changeups, pauses and outstanding guitar work.

“Tiger I” closely follows and implements a lot of the same devices as its predecessor. There are many speed changes and exceptional drum work on this track, and that truly makes this song one of the best on the album. It’s all in the pacing on “Tiger I,” and that’s an important facet on any thrash effort.

“Last Fallen” also shows some promise and inserts a groove section in the latter half of the song. The track as a whole does not seem to breed much uniqueness, but the one riff at about the two and a half minute mark makes the journey of the track worth the listen.

The album’s title track and “The Devil’s Song” are both run-of-the-mill, bombastic thrash metal. That is not a bad thing, but the tracks fail to stand out in the grand scheme of this album and even the grand scheme of thrash music in its entirety. The styling is something anybody who’s into the metal genre has seen before thousands of times. Here was where the album fell into thrash tropes, and although the musicianship is impressive, exceptional creativity isn’t really on display here.

Although Viktoria shows promise in some areas, it’s a coincidental ray of sunshine on a 90% cloudy day. The musicians are impressive, but their creations cease to be. Anyone who likes a decent thrash metal record will enjoy this, but in today’s day and age, thrash metal needs to be more than “decent” in order to pique the interest and investment of metal fans.