Scooby and the gang were taking vacation in Sweden. As usual, Scooby and Shaggy had wandered off by themselves and were about to get into some spooky trouble at the local recording studio!

“Say Scoobs, why’s that freaky dude over there like staring at us like that?”

“Rhy ron’t row Rhaggy!”

“Zoiks! He’s coming over!”

Scooby shook nervously all over as a creepy looking midget with long, badly dyed, greasy hair approached the two friends.

“What are you two doing here?” he said in a high pitched and rather gay voice.

Laughing in that rather irritating way that he does, Shaggy scratched his head as he replied, “Like, I don’t know, we just got like lost I guess, we’ll be on our way! Sorry!”

“Rhat’s right! Rorry!”

“Wait a minute. If you want you can come in and watch us playing one of our new songs. You see, my name’s Erik and I play in a really happening black metal group called Watain. In fact, it’s the most evil and blasphemous band ever!”

Scooby placed his paws over his eyes as Erik bustled the two chums into the recording studio. Inside, a fat man was sweating behind the mixing desk and was pale with fright.

“W-who are th-these g-g-guys Erik?” he said in a terrified voice.

“Just some… aquaintances of mine” he said with an evil cackle, “they’ve come to listen to our latest black metal record! Bwa hahaha! It’s the most evil and darkest and sataniest album ever recorded! It’s going to destroy the whole world! Hahahaha!!!!”

As Scooby and Shaggy watched, Erik ordered the fearful record producer to play back one of the songs off their latest album “Lawless Darkness”.

“Rhaggy! Ro romething!” Scooby howled in terror.

“Like, I don’t know what to do old buddy! We’re like, doomed!”

Suddenly the music began to play at deafening volume. Scooby and Shaggy cowered, then slowly uncovered their eyes and looked at each other in bewilderment.

“Rhaggy, rhat’s rappening?”

“I don’t know Scoobs, this music like, totally sucks! It’s just lame rock/heavy metal music with harsh vocals. It sounds like a Judas Priest tribute act performed by a bunch of like, Down’s Syndrome children or something.”

Erik angrily slammed his little fists on the mixing desk and tried to run out the door, but tripping over his ego, he fell flat on his face and was held down by several police officers who appeared out of nowhere.

“Well done you two” said one of the senior officers, “we’ve been watching this little villain for a while now. If you hadn’t stopped him, this crap would be all over MTV by now.”

One of the police officers grabbed Erik’s head and pulled upwards. His face stretched until his face came off altogether.

“Zoiks! Scoobs! It’s like, Blacky Lawless out of WASP!”

“That’s right! I used the kvlty trappings of underground black metal to pass off terrible music on moronic people who don’t know any better. And I would have got away with it too, if it wasn’t for you pesky kids.”

“Like, what’ll happen to him now chief?” Shaggy asked the senior officer as Blacky was led away.

“Don’t you kids worry, we’re going to take him out to the woods and shoot him in the back of the neck.”

“Well Scoobs, I guess that’s what you get for being a Lawless Blacky (Darkness)! Ha ha! I don’t know, make your own lame ending joke up.”

“Scooby dooby dooooo!”

Someone was telling me the other day how “great” the death metal band Morbid from Sweden were. Of course everyone knows about them and has probably heard their “December Moon” demo. This is because the infamous and revered Dead performed the vocals and possibly, at a push, because it features soon-to-be members of Entombed.

But Morbid, even on this “cult classic” recording are far too “rock” oriented, too simplistic to be a great band (or even to really show hints of being one), despite the easy charm of the songs and the mostly excellent and unearthly vocal performance of Mr Dead. Indeed, Ohlin was recruited into Mayhem on the strength of his performance here, as Attila later would be from his work on Tormentor’s “Anno Domini”. It was apparent that the obvious talents of Dead would be better utilised elsewhere.

Later Morbid material (after Dead left) moved further in this rock driven direction, and Entombed would eventually move even further into good old rock ‘n’ roll before being consumed by it utterly.

So ultimately we’re left with a decent(ish) and somehow quaintly enjoyable but otherwise totally forgettable recording, made famous and selling many copies merely by virtue of the iconic status of one of its more talented contributors.

And then there’s Burzum’s new album, “Belus”.

A lot has already been written and said about Vikernes’ comeback album and without exception it all comes back to his previous, undisputed classic albums of the black metal genre, the likes of “Det Som Engang Var” and ”Hvis Lyset Tar Oss”.

Without doubt, Vikernes is an iconic leading figure in black metal and the monumental status that Burzum maintains within underground metal means that any new work he creates, especially after a gap of many years, will cause angry and heated debate as to its merits, or lack of.

Now let’s be brutally honest, “Belus” isn’t great. It’s barely even good. It certainly isn’t the equal of any of the previous albums (no, not even the ambient works, you philistines).

Let’s also get something straight, I really wanted to like this album. At a time when almost nothing of real quality is released anymore, I desperately wanted this album to be something special, for it to have the almost magical power of being able to transport the listener to fantastic realms of imagination, to take you on a mysterious journey of unexpected discoveries as the music gradually unravelled.

All that I found in “Det Som Engang Var”. It was only with a reluctant, grudging realisation that I found this was not the case with “Belus”. As much as I wanted to love this new album, I couldn’t find it in myself to pretend that it’s somehow as good or even better than his previous works. 

For a band like Taake, whose music verges on the sweetly fluid emo-melodious side of black metal, “Belus” would be a good album. For any band playing what people mockingly call norsecore, “Belus” would be a good album. And when I say “good”, I only mean in terms relative to the bands in question.

But when we talk about Burzum, listening to “Belus” is a bit like opening a fine bottle of a good vintage champagne and finding it filled with cheap lemonade. And no amount of self-delusion on the part of disappointed fans can hide that.

It was a cold, misty morning, and Johan Lahger entered his dark and mouldy woodland bedroom deep within the depths of somewhere or other in Sweden.

He turned his moss-covered laptop on and plucked his New York Yankees baseball cap from his head. On a shelf above his desk, next to a radio controlled Dalek toy, lay his legendary troll mask, buried beneath almost 10 years of dust.

In the blue green glare of the Microsoft Windows logo, Johan reverently lifted the garishly painted papier-mache mask and attached it to his grinning face. Johan had magickally transformed into his infamous stage persona. He was once again the almighty SHAMAATAE!!!

“Fuck, the elastic’s really tight, I must have put on weight” he muttered as finally he logged on, scratching thoughtfully at his crotch.

Ding!  Aha, an email had arrived! Shamaatae (for it was he) clicked on the icon and read with impatience the typo-ridden news from his record label. The artwork for Arckanum’s comeback album, “ÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞ” was ready at last. Excellent! He quickly downloaded the image files, the Great God Pan helping them speed through the okkultik broadband in a digital dance of flowing 0’s and 1’s.

“What the flying FUCK!??!!!?!!” Shamaatae gasped as he gazed upon the projected front cover of his forthcoming album. Instead of eleven Þ runes invoking some kind of mysticness, a crudely photoshopped line of plain old alphabet “p’s” had been hastily pasted across the bottom of the cover.

The woodland troll grabbed his i-phone and immediately rang the label boss.

“Hell-o? Johan?” came the cheery answer.

“It’s Shamaatae actually, I’ve got the mask on. I’ve just received your email with the cover art…”

“What d’you think? Looks good eh?”

The troll huffed. “No it bloody well does NOT. You’ve totally fucked up. I wanted a little line of RUNES for the album title, you’ve just put a load of sodding p’s on there!”

“Yeah I had some trouble with that, I don’t really know how to type runes. It took me 6 years to find out how to do umlauts for christ’s sake. I thought using p’s was a good compromise.”

“But those fucking little p’s don’t have any occult significance you fuckhead! What mystic relevance do a line of p’s add up to? It looks like something from Sesame Street!”

“Look I’m sorry alright? How about I just remove the lettering altogether? It’ll look better like that, I promise. Okay?”

“Okay. Good then,” sulked the mighty troll.

“Just one other thing. The CD pressing plant called this morning. They’re not able to spread the tracks over 11 CDs like you wanted…”

“Oh for fuck’s sake!!!! I knew I should have gone with Osmose! Those guys have custom keyboards with “666” keys so you don’t even need to press “6” three times! AND they know how to do runes AND sodding umlauts too!”  

Shamaatae hung up and threw his i-phone across the desk.

Snap! The elastic holding the troll mask onto Johan’s face snapped and Shamaatae fell lifeless to the floor. The raging troll had turned back into mild-mannered Johan once more.

“Bollocks, the sun’s come up” observed Johan ruefully as Shamaatae’s grotesque features grimaced up at him.

“Oh well,” Johan sighed as he reached up, carefully pulling another rubber mask down from his shelf, “I’ve still got you Ronald.”

He attached the rubber, factorymade mask to his face and squinted through the eyeholes into an ornate trollish mirror. Ronald McDonald stared back.

“I’ve gots me some hamburgling to be a foilin’!”

Morgan Steinmeyer Hakansson, guitarist and founder-member of Swedish black metal band Marduk, wistfully blew a smoke ring into the air, contemplating the fine curves of his Harley Davidson from the lounge window. With a sigh he stubbed out his cigar and drained two fingers of whisky as he sat heavily into a dark leather armchair, dislodging a signed Pantera CD from the armrest with a clatter. That cunt Satyr had left it at his house after Frost’s birthday party (it read: TO MY MATEY SATEY, HEIL HITLER, LOVE PHIL with a badly drawn swastika underneath). He felt down the side of the chair and found a little marzipan demon – all that remained of the cake he’d carefully baked the day before. Of course, Frost had been drunk and had wiped his limp penis all over the icing, the ungrateful dubiously gendered twat. Morgan closed his eyes and sank deep into thought as he usually did at this time of day.

It wasn’t fair. He’d done everything he could to make Marduk what it was, admittedly more through sheer bloody-minded persistence than any real discernable talent, and deep down he knew that it had never been enough. Sure, they had a relatively big fanbase and made a more than comfortable living from their music, but most of their fans were total idiots and there was always the nagging doubt that they were far from equal amongst their contemporaries. Ivar from Enslaved had pissed all over Morgan’s shoes on tour once and on demanding an apology, Ivar simply farted and walked away without a word.

The likes of Emperor, Darkthrone, Mayhem, or those freewilly fuckers in Enslaved had all quickly started making crappy albums after 1995 or so, but at one point they had all released bonafide, influential classics hailed to this day by sensible metal fans the world over. Where was Marduk’s classic album? Morgan sighed again and thought back to the early days of the band, trying to figure out for the millionth time where he’d gone wrong.

With the original (failed) intention to form “the most blasphemous band in the world”, Marduk started off playing death metal as most soon-to-be black metal bands did in those times. They relatively quickly signed to a record label and a young Morgan felt his blasphemous (tee hee!) band was really going somewhere. But doubts had already formed in his mind even before the release of ‘Dark Endless’ in December 1992, as he realised Marduk’s form of death metal was outmoded, generic and uninspired. It added nothing to a burgeoning genre that had already seen the release of absolute timeless classics (that damned word again, Morgan thought) like Deicide’s first album and then the legendary ‘Legion’ six months before Marduk’s own lame debut. Not to mention Morbid Angel’s ‘Blessed are the Sick’, released a year earlier. Morgan could hear the precise writhing riffage of Trey Azagthoth and Richard Brunelle playing dimly in his head and wished he could completely erase his own sub-standard first effort ‘Dark Endless’ from the dank corner of his memory where it sat, mocking him with its garishly painted cyclopean eye.

Still, those stupid Americans could keep their death metal, black metal was where it was at in Northern Europe and Marduk could become legendary in that revitalised genre instead! So Morgan quickly began the writing of material for ‘Those of the Unlight’, a black metal masterpiece that would seal Marduk’s place forever in the… oh shit. Already those Norwegian wankers Burzum, Immortal and Darkthrone had released veritable milestones in metal, making ‘Those of the Unlight’ look almost totally redundant by the time of its release in 1993. Yet again, others were taking giant leaps in innovation and evolution while Marduk slowly plodded along behind like the class retard on a school trip.

Frustrated and depressed with his lack of acclaim and feeling left out of the media furore surrounding the death of Euronymous and various other events, Morgan strove to create a truly dark and furious recording more in the vein of his Norwegian neighbours. With ‘Opus Nocturne’ he hoped he could create an album to finally raise Marduk to what he saw as their (his) rightful place in the black metal pantheon. Working as he’d never worked before, Hakansson finally saw the release of his masterpiece in December 1994. It was the absolute best he could do, he’d literally burnt himself out creatively giving birth to the album and… it fell short by quite a way. Although it was easily Marduk’s best album so far (and remains so to this day), it was also occasionally verging on being unadventurously simplistic, unambitious and lacking the genius intensity, compositional awareness, epic vision and mystical atmosphere of several key albums from around that time: ‘Pure Holocaust’, ‘Transilvanian Hunger’, ‘Hvis Lyset Tar Oss’, ‘De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas’ and ‘In the Nightside Eclipse’. In short, despite their best efforts Marduk had yet again failed to meet the standards set by others and Morgan had nothing left to offer.

At this point, despite having made a half decent album, Hakansson was at his lowest and felt a great ineffectual angsty rage building inside of him. The whole world should be made to suffer for not bowing to the might of Marduk, he seethed. In frustration he began to write even simpler, angrier music for a new album which after a great deal of thought he decided to call ‘Fucking Fuck Off You Ungrateful Scum We’ll Kill You All’. Arranging the artwork, Morgan requested that it depicted an army of loyal Marduk fans all bearing official Marduk merchandise emblem shields, preparing to attack those failing to appreciate his beloved band. The other members were somewhat sceptical about this and in particular took issue with the title, suggesting instead the only slightly less impotent rage sounding ‘Heaven Shall Burn When We Are Gathered’. Morgan sulkily accepted this compromise, retaining the naff artwork, though in later years with a clearer head it was altered to something more kvlt for the reissue, along with that of ‘Dark Endless’. He at least had the last laugh over that stupid eye!

And so, after good album sales of ‘Heaven Shall Burn…” Hakansson realised the key to the band’s future commercial success: lowest common denominator appeal. Fuck trying to create something meaningful, he could attain respect and a real position of authority by appeasing the tastes of people who vaguely liked the idea of black metal but couldn’t stomach the intricate complexities of its leading artists. He would write “extreme” and “br00tuhl” music so bland, so dull and generic that even a Cannibal Corpse or Pantera fan could get into it, with a bit of luck. Add a bit of black metal cliché lyrics / imagery and voila, easily accessible pseudo-black metal for the peasants to enjoy and throw money at so they can be part of it.

With each new Marduk album released, their popularity increased exponentially and Morgan laughed to himself as he thought how much easier it was to lower black metal for the consumption of idiots than try to equal the achievements of his contemporaries as he’d attempted back in 1994. After releasing ‘Panzer Division Marduk’ in 1999, the culmination of his tried and tested “duh duh duh duh at 350BPM” technique, it dawned on him that even the most brainless Marduk fan was slowly realising how limited their music actually was. As he began to believe his own hype and buoyed with a false sense of his own greatness Hakansson made an attempt at a “heavy”, slower record to counterbalance what had tediously gone before. It failed utterly. His grunting monkey fanbase wanted something fast and broootuuuhl and no one else even cared anymore. The only thing he could think of doing was to go back to what Marduk did best, yet conceal it behind a gimmick of some kind. All it had to do was serve as a distraction for the majority of moronic modern black metal listeners, which wouldn’t prove too difficult. At first he flirted with the idea of a science fiction themed album called ‘Star Destroyer Marduk’, where the war film samples on “Panzer Division…” would simply be replaced with Star Wars sound effects. But as it turned out, he discovered an even better solution to his problem, and it would also provide Marduk with the scene credibility Morgan had so longed for all these years, no matter how artificial and fleeting it would eventually prove to be.

Of course, he had known Belfagor of Ofermod for years, here was someone who had actually looked up to Hakansson and hung out with the band trying to look cool, an impressionable kid who’d even formed a band, Nefandus, to try and impress him. Later, Morgan had heard the kid’s EP, Ofermod’s ‘Mysterion Tes Anomias’ and felt a surge of panic. It was nothing amazing, it was just above average “Swedish black metal” ™, but it showed that there was a potential rival to Marduk’s position as kings of not-quite-good-enough. Then, a few years later many younger Swedish bands claimed to have been largely influenced by Ofermod’s “religious black metal”, much to Morgan’s chagrin and hurt feelings.

One of these bands in particular held Hakansson’s attention, a kvlt underground entity known as Fragrant Mist. He listened to their debut full-length album ‘Salvation’ with both awe and intense jealousy. Yet again, it was nothing really worth listening to, its genericism was cleverly hidden amongst production techniques, effects, samples and some absurdly over-the-top vocals, but that was where its genius lay, Morgan thought. This album could indeed be Marduk’s salvation. He quickly got hold of Fragrant Mist’s mainman Arioch and outlined his plans for a born again Marduk. Arioch would be to Marduk what Dead had been to Mayhem, and as such Arioch even changed his name to Mortuus, or “Dead” in the kvltest language of all: Latin. Lyrical / album concepts mostly changed to overtly religious ones and when combined with production techniques, effects, samples and those over-the-top vocals concealed the fact that underneath it all lay the same old Marduk that everyone knew and loathed. Unlike Dead-era Mayhem, Mortuus-era Marduk simply became Fragrant Mist-lite, yet were a major band with the underground credibility of having a kvlt personality as vocalist. Morgan rubbed his hands with glee as he contemplated the new glorious era for Marduk that awaited him…           
   
Morgan opened his eyes with a start as Mortuus nudged him gently.
“Thou must awaken,” said Mortuus, “verily I say unto thee, we hath many dreary and generic riffs of various genre origins to compose and fit into thy patented template for thy new opus, before entering ye studio and speed tremolo picking an angry faux-black metal song out of it. I thinketh the new album should be christened ‘Korinthianzzz PraYer Ritual Angel ov Poo’. I heareth that the cooleth thing in the scene now is scatoliturgical misspelt album titles. Amen”.
“Fucking hell I hate you,” said Morgan wearily.

Epilogue:

Satyr and Frost announced their engagement in 2007, marrying a year later in the ancient spectre ruins inspired by overflowing medieval belief and vikings and shit. A majestetic hail in honour of Peter Tatchell and their spiritual brothers in Stonewall. Hail Satan!

Mortuus / Arioch released a nu-black metal album with his religious circus troupe Fragrant Mist called ‘Maranatha’ in 2009. It is already considered black metal’s answer to Sepultura’s ‘Roots’ by many metal fans.

Morgan Hakansson continues to release Marduk albums tailored to the current middle-of-the-road “extreme metal” prevailing trends at a rate of one per financial year, to general apathy. Merchandise sales are doing well, with plans to release official Marduk plastic swords and shields bearing their logo in 2010.