Hate to disappoint the wax-moustache-and-skinny-pants crowd, but I've never been much of a Darkthrone fan. Transilvanian Hunger (just about everyone's original introduction to the band, it seems) always struck me as a low-quality, repetitive bore, and their following albums just got worse and worse as the years progressed. I even tried tuning back in recently after reading some positive press on their "newer" stuff (F.O.A.D., Circle The Wagons, Black Flags, et al.), but I found those albums to be a cross between laughable and cringe-inducing, just sloppy black and roll with some of the worst, self-referential lyrics possible ("I Am The Working Class"? Huh?). Honestly, I just don't get it. Fenriz is probably a rad dude to sit and guzzle suds with, but I'm just not feeling his jams. Sorry. Any and all hate mail should be sent directly to illogicalcontraption(at)yahoo(dot)com.
There are exceptions within Darkthrone's lackluster discography, though, mainly (and predictably for ol' Uncle Cobras), their "death metal" album Soulside Journey. I fucking love this album, and even the handful of scratchy demos that preceded it. Sure, it's not much of a departure from the millions of other DM albums that were floating around Scandinavia at the time, but the riffs are pretty cool, the grooves are crushing, the drum work is solid, and the overall tone, atmosphere, and aesthetic is just leaps and bounds beyond the generic corpsepainted cemetery tomfoolery that this band immediately adopted upon the release of 1992's A Blaze In The Northern Sky.
Boring band, awesome album. Let's fight.
Download HERE
Purchase HERE
http://peopleoftheblackcircle.blogspot.com/2012/06/darkthrone-under-funeral-moon.html
ReplyDeleteSeriously, when I first heard 'A Blaze In the Northern Sky' I thought it was a bad fucking joke. I still do. Only 'Soulside Journey' is real.
ReplyDeleteGoatlord is also worth listening to. I originally mistyped 'Goatload', though.
ReplyDeletewhat those early black metal bands were trying to achieve, is really hard to appreciate, If you are too young to remember listening to crappy 20th -time overdubbed versions of Deaths "infernal Death" or Repulsions album before it ever came out (and those were the cream of the crop -most of the stuff on the tapetrading scene was barely recognisable as music
ReplyDeleteI would listen to an album called 'Goatload'.
ReplyDeleteOf course you would.
ReplyDeletean album called goatload would be the perfect cufflinks for the type of garment i don
ReplyDeleteSoulside Journey is definitely more listenable album for me than Transilvanian Hunger but my favourite remains to be A Blaze in the Northern Sky. That's probably the only DT album I really need.
ReplyDelete