As many of you have already heard by now, Marduk’s bassist Joel Lindholm was caught on camera doing the known fascist salute of the raised right arm on May 18, while performing at Incineration Fest 2023. The band fired him the next day by attributing the action to his drunken state, an excuse of course very familiar to us from the Phil Anselmo “white wine” situation in 2016. It is unfortunately not very surprising to read comments praising Marduk afterwards for their “right” reaction, including webzine Metal Sucks who initially broke the news. This shows an incredible lack of context, memory and understanding for the motives of a band like Marduk, who has created a big fascist fanbase over the years by praising Nazi Germany in their lyrics under the veil of using themes of “history”, “war” or the “aesthetics of evil” pretence, while at the same time having made racist, pro-nationalist and anti-immigrant comments which create a clear image for anyone not deep into denial. We don’t have to go into extreme details as this information is already widely available, but let’s mention Marduk’s interview from 1995 in Nordic Vision where they referred to the city of Norkopping as “occupied by immigrants who poison our environment” and that “sometimes you wonder if you are in Sweden or Somalia”. In the same interview, they admitted that Marduk have been boycotted in Germany because they want to “prevent immigration in Sweden” and Morgan Hakkanson also admits he is proud of his grandfather being a “serving German officer during the second world war”. In other words, Marduk has never really hidden what they believe. Some years after making these comments, Marduk began incorporating in their music the themes of Nazi Germany during the period of world war II.

Starting from “Panzer Division Marduk” It only takes a few minutes of reading their lyrics to see that Marduk is clearly glorifying their subjects, praising the strength, resilience and killing power of the Panzer division in “502”. In 2003’s “World Funeral” in the song “Night of the Long Knives” which refers to the nazi purge of 1934 that solidified Hitler in power, the lyric writers put themselves in the position of the nazis doing the killings, stating “You’ll all be equal in the dirt – equal to fucking shit”. How’s that for lyrics that neo-nazis are certainly going to like? There are many examples of songs like this up until 2018’s “Victoria“, which is basically a whole album that deals specifically with nazi themes. There is absolutely no sense of “criticism”, the whole album is pure glorification of the nazi war machine with many references to nazi operations, military and paramilitary troops and things like that. Marduk clearly put themselves in the position of the nazis, they revel in it.

It shouldn’t be difficult to understand that a band that writes lyrics so that they will be specifically enjoyed by neo-nazis, has expressed political opinions that totally align with neo-nazi positions, has been caught buying neo-nazi propaganda material from neo-nazi sites and their bassist casually throws a fascist salute in their shows, is in fact neo-nazi indeed, whatever they might say to the contrary. It is also not difficult to go and see many comments in their videos featuring 14/88 or other neo-nazi slogans, or the reports that neo-nazi presence in their shows is something that is seen quite often to understand that Marduk obviously does attract this kind of crowd. Despite all this evidence, Marduk has still managed to play in big festivals and be covered by the largest percentage of the metal press that seems to buy into their rhetoric of just doing this for the art and for the historical interest, so why shouldn’t they want to continue with this facade? A band like Marduk is a business after all. Perhaps musicians playing in bands like Marduk throw fascist salutes while playing because they feel perfectly safe and comfortable doing it in this environment. They just weren’t notified that it’s not a good look to get caught.