Under The Sign Of The Black Mark

Under the Sign of the Black Mark is an album released in 1987 by extreme metal band Bathory. This is the most representative Black Metal album made by the band.

There are songs like “Chariots of Fire” and “Of Doom” which are true black-songs which are characterized by the particular guitar distortions commonly and vulgarly called “mosquito distortion” and the vocal style in pure screaming of Quorthon, as in the two predecessor albums, but in this case in an even stronger and more incisive way.

These elements make it clear how much in this record, more than any other released in the ‘80s, the band approaches the musical concept itself of modern Black Metal, concept later “canonized” formally on the stylistic/formal level by the Norwegian Bands of the early '90s.

The lyrics focus on themes similar to their previous work: death, evil, massacre, vengeance. An interesting song is “Woman of Dark Desires”, a tribute to the band’s namesake Elizabeth Báthory. The song “Equimanthorn” makes references to Hell as well as to Norse mythology, including Odin’s “eight-legged black stallion” Sleipnir.

Unlike the predecessors, in this album there are fewer explicit references to anti-Christianity and Satanism, because Quorthon said that, although he wasn’t satanist, he wanted to attack the Christianity from a different position, realizing that Satanism is a product of Christianity.

Eduardo Rivadavia of AllMusic wrote:

The album remains a career highlight for Bathory, and a crucial LP for all lovers of extreme metal.

Fenriz of Darkthrone called it “the quintessential black metal album”. He also cited it as a musical inspiration for the 1995 Darkthrone album Panzerfaust, besides Celtic Frost’s Morbid Tales and Vader’s Necrolust demo.

On the album’s impact, Daniel Ekeroth, author of the book Swedish Death Metal, commented in an interview with Decibel magazine in 2012:

Even by Bathory’s standards, this was a masterpiece, on par with both Bonded by Blood and Reign in Blood. The songs were perfected, and the sound more atmospheric and uncanny than before. Bathory were now the most extreme and one of the very best metal bands out there.