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Eleven albums in, and Marduk just won't quit. I admit I think this band has been in sort of a rut, with the unremarkable Plague Angel in 2004 followed by the forgettable Rom 5:12 in '07. If not for the awesomeness of their live album Warschau I would have given up entirely. Thankfully, the new one, Wormwood, manages to get the energy back up while injecting some new elements into their sound.

This is Marduk, but amid the usual blasting and flailing they have added some slower, more intense numbers like the killer "Funeral Dawn" and the crawling beast of "To Redirect Perdition". The guitar sound is a biting, snarling saw without the obvious NWSDM sound of the Sunlight job on World Funeral, and this album has no hint of a Death Metal sound to it. This is a very modern sounding Black Metal album, but the feel and spirit are spot on, and this is the first Marduk album since La Grande Danse Macabre to have real atmosphere. Most of this album is the energy and aggression you expect from this venerable act, but in a few places they have ventured outside their formula and produced some more adventurous sounds, and the music sounds worlds better for it. If you are a fan of any later period Marduk works, then this is not a disc to skip.