Panzer Division Marduk is the sixth studio album by Swedish black metal band Marduk. It was recorded and mixed at The Abyss in January 1999 and released in June 1999 by Osmose Productions. The theme of the album is war, as Nightwing was blood, and La Grande Danse Macabre (the band's next studio album) would be death, forming a trilogy of "Blood, War and Death", Marduk's vision of what black metal is, unending grimness. Panzer Division Marduk was the last Marduk release by Osmose Productions.
The original album cover features a photo of the Swedish version (Stridsvagn 104) of the British Centurion Mk5 tank. The 2008 reissue of the album featured a Panzer VI E "Tiger" on its cover, reinforcing the Germanic World War II theme of the album. The internal sleeve pictures a tank column triumphant across a city in ruin: this is the Red Army across a destroyed Berlin in 1945.
The concept of World War II being raised in every track initially led many proponents of National Socialist black metal to consider the band akin to them, notwithstanding the fact that vocalist Legion and guitarist/composer Morgan publicly debunked this rumor, saying that Marduk has no political point in their lyrics, and the band has nothing to do with Nazi views.[citation needed]
