Darkthrone - The Underground Resistance (Album Review)
Friday, 22 February 2013
Written by Ben Bland
Some people will never get over the fact that Darkthrone are no longer the ultra-kvlt and true Norwegian black metallers they once were. For these people the fact that Fenriz and Nocturno Culto are now openly plundering the annals of heavy metal history for inspiration apparently equates to some kind of insult. If Darkthrone aren’t going to bother producing black metal at its frostiest then who else is?
Well, frankly there is a massive surplus of bands producing shit rip-offs of what Darkthrone were doing in the early nineties. There aren’t many bands around playing awesome, crusty, old school heavy metal with the same passion that Darkthrone exhibit on 'The Underground Resistance'. Rather than phoning in their old sound, over the last decade Darkthrone have been honing an unoriginal, but enjoyable, classic metal sound that has clearly kept them interested, judging from their fairly prolific album release rate, and that’s what is most important. Nobody needs Darkthrone failing to match 'A Blaze in the Northern Sky' or 'Transilvanian Hunger', but everyone needs a slice of ‘headbang like the NWOBHM is still happening’ metal every now and again.
Darkthrone’s attempts at trad metal stylings are, of course, flawed in many ways. There’s scarcely an idea here that hasn’t been done better before, but that’s hardly the point. The two men behind this band clearly aren’t fools and have mixed things up subtly on this record. The short, sharp Motorhead imbued sound that has dominated several recent albums has at least been given a break here, in favour of an album that occasionally breaches the ‘epic’ territory of power metal. There are moments of thrash and doom here as well, but this is as close to standardised classic metal as Darkthrone are ever going to get. Attempts to hit high notes are mostly woeful, and only a deaf man would claim that the riffs don’t get a bit samey after a while, but again that isn’t the point.
All across this album we get Darkthrone as fans producing the music that they love. Three tracks each by Fenriz and Nocturno Culto, with the former exhibiting more of the ‘epic’ tendencies and the latter emphasising their proto-thrash tendencies. Such tendencies may threaten to make the fourteen (!) minute 'Leave No Cross Unturned' vaguely unlistenable but after a couple of beers it sounds like the greatest thing that Celtic Frost never got round to committing to tape. Similarly the ludicrous yelling that makes up the catchiest bit of 'The Ones You Left Behind' should render it laughable but instead you end up doffing your cap to the fact that Darkthrone are willing to steer so far from their icy reputation. If you were all about the punky aggression of the last two albums, there’s the opener 'Dead Early' to whet your appetite with a more mature take on that side of the band’s palate and there’s even a slight progressive streak to 'Lesser Men'. Nothing takes itself too seriously, of course, but likewise nothing is just a pisstake either.
So the point is that sometimes metal can just be fun, and such a scenario is infinitely preferable when the men behind such fun are two people who helped revolutionise aspects of the genre twenty years ago, rather than just some overhyped kids with Judas Priest t-shirts. Darkthrone have done enough to earn their place in the heavy history books already, if they want to rock out whilst wearing dirty old Maiden vests and give us some great drinking music at the same time then that’s absolutely fine by me.
'The Underground Resistance' is out on Monday via Peaceville.
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Well, frankly there is a massive surplus of bands producing shit rip-offs of what Darkthrone were doing in the early nineties. There aren’t many bands around playing awesome, crusty, old school heavy metal with the same passion that Darkthrone exhibit on 'The Underground Resistance'. Rather than phoning in their old sound, over the last decade Darkthrone have been honing an unoriginal, but enjoyable, classic metal sound that has clearly kept them interested, judging from their fairly prolific album release rate, and that’s what is most important. Nobody needs Darkthrone failing to match 'A Blaze in the Northern Sky' or 'Transilvanian Hunger', but everyone needs a slice of ‘headbang like the NWOBHM is still happening’ metal every now and again.
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