Labels Spotlight: Black Mark

 

SWITCH TO POLISH 

A legendary label, that is responsible for you-know-who, but... there's also a lot about this label that I hate and really feel like should be adressed. Uuuh... where to start?

Some boring intro: Tyfon Grammofon was a standard, distribution label (every country seems to have at least one of such). Because Heavy Metal was the shit in the 80s, they, or actually Borje "Boss" Forsberg, decided to take a risk, and release their own stuff, starting with a split compilation, "Scandinavian Metal Attack", on which, a certain legend was born (yes, I'm talking about Bathory). The reception was really hot, and thus another decision was made - let's release Bathory's debut album. For that purpose, Black Mark Productions was born. Alas, there is a lot of confusion and mystery behind the label origins and when it was founded, so everything has to be taken with a grain of salt.

Thomas "Quorthon" Forsberg (the brain behind the Bathory) all his life denied that his father was the mysterious "Boss", who also released and produced his albums, probably out of embarrassment. I mean, who wants to be known as daddy's little boy? But honestly, I have never seen any negative reaction about this little factoid, so it does seem to be an unfounded fear. The aura of cult around the Bathory was much bigger than any criticism Quorthon would receive over years.

The sudden hit that was Bathory, helped the Black Mark grow, with adding even more legendary bands to the roster, starting with Edge of Sanity, Invocator, Agressor, Necrosanct, Seance, Lake of Tears, Morgana Lefay or Cemetary. But even the obscure titles, like Tribulation, A.R.G., Rosicrucian, Mental Crypt, Leukemia, or Anesthesy (to say the least) were worthy of time, and should be listened to at least once. The talent that they gathered in one place was really impressive. I don't remember ever feeling disappointed by any of the Black Mark's releases, no matter the genre. As outside of early Black / Speed, they offered Death, Gothic, Progressive, or Power Metal. All imaginative. I don't think the label ever had one bad band on their roster, to be frank.

But it wasn't all good and cool, as there were many problems as well. Agressor had low budget to record their albums, which resulted in a disastrous result in regards to the production, which the band finally corrected decades later. And unfortunately it was label's standard. Not many bands had good sounding albums and it was never corrected. Another example would be Morgana Lefay, who for a while were operating as simply "Lefay" during their Noise Records years, and had one "joke" album done for Black Mark as a contractual obligation, which the band later officially disowned.

Many times the booklets had no lyrics, photos, or info, but instead a promo of Black Mark's catalogue. And while the label gave a lot of freedom to their artists, it did not really care much about promoting their bands. This would also explain why the label never became a major player, or why the Swedish groups preferred to sign with a foreign label. At the end of the day, it was a small, home-office bureau with  vision no further, than their main bread and butter, which was obviously Bathory. Because of this, the final years of the label were littered with various cheap "greatest hits" compilations, released for a quick buck. 

Their last original release was a rather mediocre album by a Gothic band Jennie Tebler's Out of Oblivion*, called "Till Death Tear Us Part" in 2008. Afterwards, the label was only repressing some of their catalog, with Bathory being the main focus, until the death of Boss in 2017. Sure, there still are some limited vinyl pressings being produced, but I guess it's all products released under the license.

Black Mark overall reminds me of our own native label, Metalmind, run by T. Dziubiński, albeit to BM's credit, the Swedes were much more honest, and weren't such rip-offs like MM was. With that said, there is one thing that makes my head scratch.

You see, I own the Bathory releases, which were versions from 2003 and onwards, and I can't really recommend them. Not only all of them had some weird, pointless outro being added, not only some stuff was occasionally removed (like the only band photo ever shot, which was originally featured in "Blood Fire Death", some extra art in "Hammerheart", or lyrics in "Requiem"), but also the worst of all, had some unexplainable fusion of tracks, with the "Twilight of the Gods" being the biggest offender.

What do I mean by that? The original CD version of the album had 7 separate tracks accordingly to the number of songs on the album. However, the repress version has the first 3 songs mastered into one track. It's a practice that happened on all of Bathory's classic albums up to "Octagon". Each one of these albums had at least one case of two or more songs joint together onto one track, so if you want to play a particular song, you might have problem with finding it, if you are not accustomed with the CD.

So if you want to buy any of Bathory album on CD, look for pre-2003 pressings. Don't worry, it's not like the newer versions were remastered either, so you're not losing anything, quite the opposite. Last but not least, such an oversight is certainly baffling and disrespectful, which is more bizarre given the fact, that it's a situation of a father re-releasing music by his deceased son. It's like he did not care himself at all about his own legacy? And given that nobody asked Boss about the reason for these fuck-ups, it will likely be left forever unanswered. But it is sad that Bathory did not receive the re-releases it deserved. 

* okay, so the label did have ONE bad band. Jennie Tebler was Quorthon's little sister, so I guess everything stays within the family...