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DARKTHRONE
Eternal Hails……

Peaceville (2021)
Rating: 9/10

There’s always an air of excitement when a new Darkthrone album is unveiled, even if I kinda know what’s coming. That’s not to say that the band – in their regressive style of grim gloominess – isn’t unique. After all, their brand of what is now known as “epic black heavy metal” somehow fuses numerous styles and yet it’s still recognisable as Darkthrone.

Since the cold deathly echoes of their 1991 debut album Soulside Journey to the pitch black infernal wastes of those truly evil successors, and onwards to a brash mix of punky doom, trad’ metal sludginess and now a bit of everything, the gruesome twosome of Ted “Nocturno Culto” Skejellum (vocals, guitar and bass) and Gylve “Fenriz” Nagell (drums) makes for quite a formidable force within the heavy metal realm.

With Eternal Hails…… – a record which boasts only five, albeit lengthy songs – the duo continues to forge great fortresses of black slimy iron within which are concealed devilish, cursed anthems that spill with ancient tales and grimy riffs of doom.

In the liner notes, for what is the Darkthrone’s 19th full-length studio album (can you believe it!), Fenriz praises heavy metal masters Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath), Leif Edling (Candlemass), Tom G. Warrior (Hellhammer, Celtic Frost etc.) and Cliff Burton (Metallica). No real surprise then that at times you will hear the band trawl the cesspit of late 70s and 80s metal slurry in order to create its own style of organic, bestial bludgeoning.

Encased within spectacularly cosmic cover art – courtesy of David A. Hardy, which I’ve actually seen on more obscure albums in the past – this 42 minute opus opens with the glistening gallop of ‘His Master’s Voice’, a seven-minute monolith which takes me back to my more youthful days of hearing those Speed Kills compilations for the first time where the likes of Celtic Frost, Bathory, Venom, Possessed, Voivod and Bulldozer bombarded me with their prime evil sounds of slaughter.

Nocturno Culto’s vocals are the usual Tom G. Warrior-styled grotesque grunts. And then there’s the music, that almost vintage black staple of orgasmic raw riffs which at one moment roll like waves of black oil before becoming anthemic clanks of steel, evoking lost US power metal records and equally obscure Euro covens which would turn up on labels such as Ebony and Mausoleum.

Within the seven-minute time frame the duo embraces slow, methodical plods of doom which then give way to speedier passages of soaring where an unexpected solemn guitar solo rises like a blackbird from the cold, embracing fog.

Lead single ‘Hate Cloak’ begins like some recognisable mid-80s cult metal gem, a killer melody echoing to the vibrations of Fenriz’s tumbling percussion as Nocturno snarls and growls over the festering plod of the catchy doom-laden rhythm which only grows in size to become an epic Sabbath-cum-Candlemass slab of infectious trudging. The track is the most doom-drenched piece on offer, bringing riff after riff within its icy chamber.

Meanwhile, ‘Wake Of The Awakened’ brings dissonant, remote pace, where a streak of black metal aesthetics runs like ice through the veins with this nifty grey haze heap of cold, melancholic morbidity. The riffs again shift but remain raw and thorny as another clanging trudge takes hold. There are hints of old Voivod with that rusty speed, and of course Celtic Frost remain an ever-present influence. There’s also that distinctive mid-80s murkiness that bellows like the blackest winds and to the fury of Fenriz’s crashing percussive thuds.

‘Voyage To A North Pole Adrift’ is a stark and lumbering cut spanning ten tumultuous minutes of doom and evoking images of great damp caverns as the listener becomes lost in that cover art, before the pace quickens ever so subtly to another immersing plod. The riffs sharpen, they twist and cavort in tandem with gnarly bass dribbles before the whole thing comes together like some cosmic riddle attuning with the stars to create one vast yet sombre echo of suffocating sombreness.

Closing track ‘Lost Arcane City Of Uppåkra’ (an ode to the Swedish village) is simplistic in design and yet brimming with Hellhammerisms before a wonderfully melodic segment comes to fruition – a trad’ metal bark yet daubed in mustiness whereby ancient metal gods such as Cirith Ungol spring to mind.

The way the combo relates black metal with doom is to be admired as always, but what I’d really love to hear more of is the synth experimentation which oozes in around the 39-minute mark of the album; an evocative Pink Floyd-esque cosmic trickle that dampens our summer with a galactic chill and builds to the sort of crescendo last experienced with Fenriz’s Neptune Towers project. It’s a sublime way to end an album that I didn’t want to end.

Darkthrone’s latest composition is a record that sneers towards the usual suspects such as Black Sabbath and Celtic Frost, while also smirking along with the greyer, icier realms of, say, Coroner, and bringing vast expanses that yawn to the creak of Manilla Road.

But while the influences have always been worn on the leather sleeves of the band, Eternal Hails…… is still very much Darkthrone, an entity that is shifting – albeit slowly – through the realms like a stranger creeping through Lovecraftian streets of twisted walls and shadowy windows, with each gloomy façade represented by a thudding drum, a grinding bassline, a roaring riff and a bellowing, scowling rant.

Darkthrone remains anthemic and esoteric all at once, so all hail the mighty men behind this musty monolith of molten metal oozing. And those that still yearn for the band to revisit the sound of A Blaze In The Northern Sky (1992), must shut up and be crushed by this mighty slab of woeful meanderings.

Neil Arnold

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