Mid-life crisis horseshit? Mid-era Darkthrone? Yes. Punk-era Darkthrone? No way. Their punk records were all fun and catchy and not as dull and boring and painful to sit through as Total Death, Goatlord and Plaguewielder and the like, say what you will.

Whoa, Goatlord so does not belong in that category...that's really old pre-A Blaze stuff, and the sound is what you might expect from that time period of the band. What's more, it's a bloody amazing recording.

The above. Goatlord is really goddamn good.

I've loved pretty much every era of Darkthrone, though each one had it's flops. CTW was killer though and I hope the next one is the same.

Album cover is posted.



What the newest Manilla Road should have looked like...

Darkthrone as a band stopped bugging me long time ago; they could release a tech-death album for all I care.

It's always sad to see wide appreciation for music that is, umm, objectively bad.

Their punk era album covers are always so freaking awesome.

It's a pretty cool cover, not as "punk-looking" as the last three, makes me wonder what the new music will be like. Now we just need a new track!

Why do you say that? The new Manilla Road album cover is awesome. So is this one. Pretty different for Darkthrone, but I dig it.

Objectively bad because you don't like it? Please.

That cover is awesome!


I hope that was tongue-in-cheek, because otherwise you sound incredibly ignorant. Even if you can make the argument that there is a democratic idea of what constitutes good music, it can hardly be called objective.

The art looks really awesome, its funny how their new album may be less punkish so the album art reflects it.

Well if the artwork is any indication, Darkthrone will have a whole new beast for us and it will kick major ass. So stoked.

Cool artwork, but yeah... unusual for the band. Still, if they're making 10 minutes-long songs while trying to kinda sound power metal, they have such cover and they're fans of Manilla Road, I hope it's any indication that it will be some kind of mix between Darkthrone and Manilla Road (or any good epic heavy metal band like Brocas Helm for example). And that Fenriz will do quite a bit of clean vocals. It has the potential to be reeaaallly awesome. And considering how much I loved Circle the Wagons, I'm hyped as fuck.

EDIT: Oh, and guys, look at this: Original artwork of the DT album and same artist as Manilla Road's Mark of the Beast

Isn't that more or less what your last post in the FFA says?

The cover is great, just like their last few albums, but I can't really get into their new musical style. Can't stand oldschool punk music. If they move to a more traditional metal sound I'd be very interested, but is that actually likely or just wishful thinking on our part?

I am so pumped for this. Circle the Wagons is probably my favourite of the last few and that cover is just awesome.

Can't fucking wait for this.

I have an awesome FOAD shirt, but I hate that album

It isn't wishful thinking. But here, this is starting to get to me a bit. A whole lot of people keep referring to "Darkthroen's punk albums", "Darkthrone's punk era'< etc, etc. I don't know, guys, to be honest I've only really started digging deep into punk in the last few years, but Darkthrone still sound like a metal band through and through to me, albeit with some punky riffs added (especially on The Cult is Alive, but less so on all subsequent albums), and a production that seems to kind of resemble some old punk bands in that it's well, very clear sounding but not produced much aside from (plug in, clip on some drum mikes and go!" You could say I suppose that the ethos is more punk than the music itself. Having said all that, it is true that when I played Dark Thrones and Black Flags for my mostly punk/hardcore-loving friend, he instantly blurted out, "dude, this sounds like fucking Antiseen, why don't you listen to more punk!!?"

But still, if newer Darkthrone is punk, so is most of Motorhead's catalogue and the first Bathory album...

Yeah I'm listening to F.O.A.D. right now and it's not really all that punky...it's more of a Celtic Frost-ish sound without the doomy, serious stuff they got into sometimes. Or like Abom said, Motorhead and Bathory. A lot of people just seem to think punk means anything even a little bit rawer and looser than the norm. This is really raw and really loose, but definitely still sounds metal. The Cult is Alive was a little punkier than this, but really only because all the songs basically sounded the same and were a lot harsher overall.

But yeah this new Darkthrone stuff - seems really awesome to me. I only heard a few of their albums before but decided to check out the two albums I mentioned above on a whim because of this thread. And I do not regret that.

Empyreal, hell yes! Check out Dark Thrones and Black Flags...you won't be disappointed, I think; it's a monstrously great album!

Yeah, the song titles alone look awesome.

The other two I've heard are Under a Funeral Moon and Circle the Wagons, by the way. I'd like to go hear all their albums and really get a sense of how they came from UAFM to Circle the Wagons in full, but they have so damn many I think I'll just take it slow for now.

Sure, don't overdose. I have to say they've been one of my favourite bands since highschool (I'm thirty-two this year!), and t've had no trouble adapting to any of their changes, because they've been gradual and, as I said, not really all that significant to a longtime fan, although I do kind of miss Fenriz's old style of lyric writing sometimes. They had a bit of a dull period in the late 90s/2000 but even some of those songs are pretty good...

Do you know what "objective" means? Shut up.

Great cover art \m/

Its not objectively bad, but their output past Panzerfaust literally went from uninspired to just lazy and laughably bad stuff. The band hasn't done as much to sully their name as much as morons like the guys in Ulver, but the material they put out is just miles away from being as powerful as their older material. Obviously, they aren't going for the black metal sound of the music they more or less created, but even for that rocking punk sound it just sounds like a bunch of old men crapping out dime a dozen riffs to please their remaining fans.

Nah, it's certainly really loose and silly music, but they bash it out with intensity and the ethos behind the music is incredibly respectable and genuine. They're having fun, but it's far from being phoned in or just being a joke band. They're basically playing up heavy metal, the music they love - I don't see anything wrong with that.

It's just not very good music. But I don't really like any Darkthrone other than Soulside Journey.

I don't understand how old school fans of the band can appreciate their post-2006 releases. They're such a shadow of what they once were...

Anyway, this has already been debated. In my eyes, the beginning of the end is when a film maker begins to make movies about the movies he likes, or when a musician begins to write music about the bands he listens to. In other words, lack of inspiration.

By the way, I don't understand why Total Death, Ravishing Grimness and Hate Them are underestimated either. I think they are definitely as good as A Blaze in the Northern Sky, without taking the historical background into consideration. I even prefer those 3 albums over ABITNS.

Why doesn't anyone acknowledge that Total Death was a cornerstone in black metal's evolution? It was one of the first albums which featured the constant-blastbeat-over-tremolo-picked-major-chords formula.

Agree. Not really bad, but uninventive, self-caricatured and stereotyped.




In fact, there is a new trend since the mid-2000's: metalheads calling "punk" or "rock'n'roll" any type of metal which slightly differs from what they are used to listening. To sum it up:
"experimental" use of synths = indus metal
"experimental" use of rock instruments = punk metal, or "post-rock" if it's in the Alcest vein
nationalist or racialist lyrics = RAC metal, even if the RAC influence is non-existent

Well, yeah. Look, the thing is you're probably taking it too seriously. Don't do that. These days, Darkthrone's music isn't supposed to be taken too seriously.

Of course, I'm taking it seriously. Listening to "Crossing the Triangle of Flames" makes me enter a kind of religious trance. Why do you want me to vulgarize religious music?

Nope, more like appreciation of their art. I just don't see the problem with that at all I guess. But then, I like traditional metal more than black metal, so I have a soft spot for music in the vein of later Darkthrone anyway.

I was referring to the newer Darkthrone records. If you don't like it, you don't like it, but criticizing the band for being uninventive self-caricaturing stereotypes is just pointless. That's exactly what they pretend to be, and they love to play with that image, obviously.

That almost mirrors how I got into Darkthrone. A friend burnt a cd for me that among others included Darkthrone's A Blaze in the Northern Sky, Transilvanian Hunger and Panzerfaust, and I dutifully listened to them and thought they were "alright". Then I started reading reviews of their albums on the internet and noticed that many people seemed to dislike their newer albums and I became curious to hear what they'd developed into. So when I found FOAD and Dark Thrones and Black Flags at my local library I borrowed them - and almost instantly got hooked. And then their older albums "opened up" for me, because I now had the knowledge that they were constantly evolving and hadn't just released the same album over and over again.
So now I'm also trying to work my way through their discography - I'm at the same time working my way forward from their earliest albums and going backwards from FOAD, and yes, it's a slow process. So far the only one I didn't really like was Soulside Journey.
And of course I'm also looking forward to hear their new album, it'll be interesting to hear what direction they're going in now.

Man, Darkthrone really does tear the fanbase in half, doesn't it? I really appreciate all of their albums because I see Fenriz and Nocturno as great musicians. I find them creative enough to evolve rather than hash out souless copies of their bm style just because its easier to keep making the same albums every two years. Thats why I love Darkthrone, because they make the music they want to make instead of catering to fans of their original sound.

This is going to destroy all modern metal, for sure, the cover is awesome and it certainly looks Manilla Road-esque, can't wait, traditional/power from Darkthrone? A dream come true for me.

So... If I get you right, you think A Blaze in the Northern Sky, Transilvanian Hunger and Panzerfaust are essentially the same album?

No, but I can see why it might come off like that. They're three distinct albums for me, but what I was trying to say is that after Panzerfaust (or A Blaze, or Transilvanian Hunger) they could have continued along that line, stuck to the tried and tested formular and made other albums that sounded like any of those three. But their evolution makes me appreciate all their albums more - if Darkthrone hadn't evolved, I probably wouldn't have liked them as much.

This just means you have shitty taste in metal. Sorry.

Their "punk" efforts were weak, awful, insipid garbage. That being said they are still one of the greatest bands to ever happen, and I will still undoubtedly listen to this.