Video: Marduk - "Souls for Belial"
Above is Marduk’s video for “Souls for Belial”, from the album Serpent Sermon, which came out in the US last week.
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I’ve never played a tabletop RPG or war game, but I’ve read a lot about Warhammer 40,000. I suspect a lot of metalheads have. (Thank you, Bolt Thrower.)
The Warhammer 40k universe is engrossing. It bursts with novel and extremely metal ideas. One of my favorites is the idea behind Ork technology. As in most fantasy universes, Warhammer 40k‘s Orks are dumb brutes. But since the Warhammer 40k universe is a future-y space universe, the Orks need some way to operate high technology.
So the Orks have a clever work-around: their technology is based on belief. Orks are dumb, but they collectively generate a low-level psychic field that alters the reality around them. Their machines aren’t assembled properly and shouldn’t work, but they do, simply because the Orks believe they will.
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This notion mirrors our reality at times. Fiat money comes to mind—it has value because people think it has value. This effect also explains why Marduk’s video for “Souls for Belial” works so well. These guys are true believers.
The ingredients of this video are perilously familiar. Bones, smoke, and open flames dominate the scenery. Corpsepainted band members scowl through their eyebrows. One waggles a skull at the camera 17 seconds in. (Perhaps a conscious reference to guitarist Morgan’s claim that he owns a piece of Per ‘Dead’ Ohlin’s skull?) Christian symbolism gets perverted. Vocalist Mortuus sings with worms on his face. And he does magic tricks: now you see a fireball in my hand, now you don’t. All rendered in sinister sepia.
I have a hard time imagining the audience for this video will be shocked by its contents. But Marduk’s conviction in these images gives them force. Flames and skulls aren’t scary on their own, but Marduk really, really believe that they are. Their seriousness infects me even as it amuses me. Those scowls are very real, and I want to scowl with them.
The music bears tremendous force, too. Marduk has experienced a creative renaissance since Mortuus joined up in 2004. His dynamic vocals have opened up Marduk’s songwriting. They’re still masters of the frigid hyperblast, but they take chances, too. Witness the spacious slowdown two and a half minutes into “Souls For Belial”—suddenly, the song yawns like the eye sockets of that skull.
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HEAR SERPENT SERMON
Stream Serpent Sermon in its entirety at Cvlt Nation.
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