Marduk
Those of the Unlight

Those of the Unlight, or "Those of the non-light," is the second album by Marduk, featuring the Tolkienian Nazgûl, the Ringwraiths, on the cover.

What better godparents for a black metal album? Wise men who pursued power until they were consumed by it and thus transformed into wraiths, no longer entirely in this world, yet not completely in the realm of ghosts. What is certain is that they have turned their backs on the light.

Black metal is quite a strange phenomenon in addition to being a musical genre.

Exclusive to Scandinavia, at least in its most canonical form, the Greek scene stands alone, though similar, and what comes from America has a different nature; it must therefore be understood in its ties to its places of origin.

Sure, the cold and the lack of light, but these are not enough to reveal the rise of this nihilistic wave that swept across the welfare state societies, something much deeper and hidden awoke in those now distant 1990s, something misunderstood and ignored, not assimilated.

It is the unintegrated archetype, Jung might say, emerging from the Scandinavian collective unconscious and forcefully claiming what is its own. The Wotanian power of Nordic supremacy, the royal and warrior might that defies the cold and death and imposes its law, Goth as in Goths but also as gods, terrible and mighty.

The flash of the archetype strikes and the black flame, an image much enjoyed by all the super true black metallers, ignites, but it is not a visible flame; it is black, as Black is the Sun that emanates astral light.

And the flame sets Norway ablaze, although to be objective, in Sweden, Bathory had paved the way, to the extent that it comes back and a Swedish scene also takes shape.

Among the early exponents, we find Marduk, who take their name from the Babylonian god, and like their contemporaries, express the discomfort of the unintegrated archetype with violent, chaotic, minimalist music, yet in its own way atmospheric; the lyrics are all of a blasphemous and anti-Christian nature, ancestral violence and repression still cry out for revenge. Compared to their Norwegian "cousins," however, Marduk's style, like Swedish style in general, is less strictly codified. The annihilation of musical structures typical of Darkthrone, with disgustingly raw and homemade productions, is avoided, and something akin to the death metal of Entombed and company is felt, as if Swedish black and death had common parents, a notion well expressed by bands like Dissection and Necrophobic. The instrumental Echoes from the Past, the penultimate track of the album, clearly illustrates all this.

In these times when violent nihilism from the outside strikes and overwhelms everything, trying to deconstruct and fluidify all it encounters, one might consider turning to the nihilism of black metal, an internal nihilism that can lead the individual to destruction, transforming them into a ghost, a terrible Nazgûl; indeed, this is the sad fate of those who invoke the archetype but then do not master it. Those, however, who are able will see the black flame shine, which in itself is beyond good and evil.