Darkthrone - Black metal from Norway

Among the most representative artists of true Norwegian black metal, a genre they helped create and consolidate during the Nineties, Darkthrone have never hidden their passion for Eighties proto-black metal and bands like Bathory, Venom and Celtic Frost. In recent times they've dug deeper into the old school and primordial side of the genre, between heavy and black'n'roll leanings, always choosing to remain proudly independent and far removed from contemporary fads.

Kolbotn is a small Norwegian municipality near Oslo. The endless winters and boredom spur three teenagers, Leif Nagell, Ivar Enger and Anders Risberget, to form a death metal band. Black Death are thus born in 1986, later renamed Darkthrone. In 1988 Risberget leaves and Ted Skjellum joins Nagell and Enger, who begin recording their first demos.

The first true Darkthrone album is Soulside Journey, a 1991 record that moves within a Scandinavian death metal sound close to that of early Entombed and bands like Nihilist and Grave. Paradoxically, it's a well-produced, well-recorded work compared to what would follow in the imminent black metal turn. It's no coincidence that it was made at the legendary Sunlight Studio, temple of Swedish death metal. The album, released through the English label Peaceville, even features almost prog-like nuances and the use of synths. There's no shortage of technical skill, and the atmospheres are given more care than the aggressive side, with lyrics ranging across metaphysical themes. In short, it's a decent debut, but one that's soon forgotten and set aside in favor of the revolutionary albums that followed. At the time, Nagell went by the pseudonym "Hank Amarillo".

The "Unholy Trinity" and the black metal turn

The real turning point in Darkthrone's work comes the following year with Blaze In The Northern Sky, a hugely important release that marks an era. After meeting Euronymous in Oslo, guitarist of Mayhem and owner of the legendary record store Helvete, the band abandons their early death metal to dive into a primordial form of black metal. The new sound has much in common with what Mayhem had offered on the historic 1987 EP "Deathcrush", as well as an obvious debt to Celtic Frost and the Eighties incarnation of Bathory. Nagell starts going by Gylve Fenris Nagell, or simply "Fenriz", borrowing the name from the mythological wolf who will kill Odin during Ragnarök, while Skjellum and Enger rename themselves "Nocturno Culto" and "Zephyrous" respectively.

While still retaining some death metal influences at the riff level, the record completely changes the atmosphere and the reference iconography: everything turns darker and more oppressive, tinged with black. An uncompromising pagan fury emerges, as shown by the breakneck "Where Cold Winds Blow" and the infernal "The Pagan Winter", a genuine tribute to the cultural roots of the Norwegian people. "In The Shadow Of The Horns" is a kind of battle cry against Christianity and its corrupt morality, guilty of having tried to subjugate the true spirit of the Scandinavian people — a veritable cultural colonization that led to violent forced conversions to the new foreign faith.

These are the years of the Black Inner Circle (Svarte Sirkel), an inner circle of artists who gathered in the basement of Helvete. The group was united by a shared passion for Satanism, isolationism and Norse paganism, all themes that would become central to the lyrics of the new Darkthrone.

Especially in the second half of the album, we can glimpse the birth of something new: that existential union between art and death, theorized and tragically put into practice by early Mayhem, reaches a crucial point of no return. It's on this record that the proverbial Pandora's box is opened, hinting at the fire that would soon set the skies of Norway ablaze: "The million hands of joy have something holy to burn," screams Nocturno on "The Pagan Winter". The cover shows guitarist Zephyrous emerging from the dark like a terrifying figure of the night. Frightened, bassist Dag Nilsen leaves the band after the album's recording, at odds with the violent and sudden change of direction.

By the artists' own admission, Blaze In The Northern Sky still bears traces of death metal influence, partly due to pressure from their label. In any case, the following album would mark Darkthrone's definitive conversion to the style they themselves would later define as "True Norwegian Black Metal".

In June 1992 the trio recorded their third album at Creative Studios in Kolbotn, Norway. Under A Funeral Moon was released on 24 June 1993, again on Peaceville. What emerges is an album of pure, misanthropic Norwegian black metal at its most evil, a work with a glacial, oppressive atmosphere that would influence countless bands to come. The album bears the influence of Varg Vikernes's debut album, better known as Burzum, released that same March 1992. At the time Varg was very close friends with Fenriz, and his influence would be central to Darkthrone's work in the early Nineties. It's also likely that hearing the demo tracks of what would become Mayhem's "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas" (1994) carried some weight too, since those tapes had already been circulating for a while among regulars of the Norwegian scene.

The screams of Nocturno Culto, pictured in black and white on the album cover in the middle of a forest, grow ever more piercing while the claustrophobic, inhuman blast-beat of the drums shows the listener no mercy.

The rhythm has something hypnotic and alienating about it. The deliberately raw, low-fi recording wrong-footed music critics and industry insiders alike. It's a record light years away from Soulside Journey, and far more radical and cacophonous than Blaze In The Northern Sky. The opener, "Natassja In Eternal Sleep", is representative of the band's new direction. The track features an abrupt fade-out worthy of a demo tape — a radically regressive choice that, in its own way, set a trend for the genre. In this way a kind of bridge is built between Nineties Norwegian black metal and the proto-black metal of the Eighties, Bathory above all. At the same time, everything is pushed to such extremes that it sounds like something alien and terrifying, tragically authentic in its own uncompromising fury.

The title track is a compact wall of sound where the guitar becomes a blade capable of cutting through ice with the help of just a few obsessive, repetitive chords. Amid the nihilistic anathemas of tracks like "Summer Of Diabolical Holocaust" and the desecrating manifesto of "Unholy Black Metal" — one of the most blasphemous lyrics ever written (only Sweden's Marduk have done worse) — it's genuinely hard to rival this release in terms of sheer malevolence and feral attitude. And yet, after Zephyrous's departure, Fenriz and Nocturno Culto would pull off this difficult feat too, outdoing themselves in extremism and brutality on their fourth album.

Now down to a duo, Nocturno and Fenriz created their most famous and controversial work. Transilvanian Hunger is the definitive evolution of Darkthrone's black metal sound, here pushed toward the extreme and the inhuman. All the instrumental parts were written and recorded by Fenriz, while Nocturno added the vocals. The album comprises eight tracks, the last four of which — essentially the entire B-side of the vinyl — have lyrics written by Burzum.

The album came out on 17 February 1994 and immediately caused a stir because of the phrase "Norsk Arisk Black Metal" (Norwegian Aryan Black Metal) printed on the back cover. The line was removed from later editions, but the band didn't back down, and in a provocative spirit Fenriz poured fuel on the fire with scathing statements against the conformist bigotry of the press, while at the same time denying any political intent behind their music. A rattled Peaceville dropped them with a statement distancing itself from Fenriz's comments. The label even refused to promote the album, but Transilvanian Hunger went on to become one of Darkthrone's most beloved and famous records regardless, later reissued multiple times by Peaceville itself.

With the help of just a few chords and the occasional semitone shift, the title track creates the violent masterpiece we all know. Fenriz's obsessive blast beat and Nocturno's piercing screams are unmatched in ferocity and malevolence. The album shows an iron-clad minimalist attitude — if by minimalist we mean an exploration of the effect that repeating a handful of chords has on the listener, who here is literally bludgeoned by brutal, direct tracks such as "Skald Av Satans Sol" and "En Ås i dype skogen". In just under forty minutes, the duo built a monolithic wall of sound that would be imitated by many other bands in the years to come.

This album brings to a close an ideal "Unholy Trinity", a trilogy of records rightly regarded as the unreachable peak of Darkthrone's career.

From "Panzerfaust" to "Sardonic Wrath": the partnership with Moonfog

In the meantime, besides playing in Valhall (a black/thrash outfit started with Erik Olivier Lancelot of Ulver, which in 1995 turned into a stoner-doom solo side project), Fenriz pursued numerous solo projects, such as the pagan-black metal of Isengard or the dark-ambient electronic music released under the name Neptune Towers. What's striking about this latter project is its closeness to a certain strand of German kosmische musik (Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze in particular). The influence of a certain strain of Teutonic electronic music is central to many Norwegian artists. Besides Darkthrone, think also of Mortiis, Burzum, Wongraven and Ulver.

In 1995 the Storm album Nordavind (north wind) was also released. Alongside Fenriz, the group featured Satyr Wongraven (Satyricon) and singer Kari Rueslåtten. The album explores Norwegian folklore, reworking traditional songs into a modern form close to the viking metal of very early-Nineties Bathory. Nordavind is a genuine masterpiece of the genre, aimed at rediscovering and celebrating Norway's pagan roots — a hugely important album that would go on to influence many pagan folk bands and projects to come.

Panzerfaust still operates on a very high level, but it's undoubtedly a less brutal work than its three predecessors, even if more varied and multifaceted. It came out in 1995 on Moonfog Productions, Satyr's label, following the traumatic split with Peaceville. Here too the influence of Burzum — by then about to go to prison for the murder of Euronymous — is very strong, as can be heard on a track like "Hans Siste Vinter". What's more, the lyrics to "Quintessence" are also credited to Greifi Grishnackh, one of the pseudonyms of Kristian "Varg" Vikernes. Even Nocturno Culto seems to adapt here to Burzum's harsh, tearing vocal style.

Musically, the duo slow down the frenzied drumming of "Transylvanian hunger" in favor of a more spectral, dramatic side. The closing stretch also makes room for the dark electronics of "Snø Og Granskog (Utferd)", which picks up on Fenriz's experiments as Neptune Towers. The track's lyrics are taken from a Norwegian folk song and feature Fenriz on vocals, further proof of the artist's growing interest in his country's folklore — a nationalist passion that would find its main outlet in the Storm project.

The follow-up Total Death came out in January 1996, again on Moonfog, but it paid the price of arriving after a string of untouchable masterpieces. Its scant thirty-five minutes don't add much to what had already been achieved so superbly on previous records. Lyric-writing credits are shared with Garm of Ulver, Ihsahn of Emperor, Carl-Michael Eide of Aura Noir, and Satyr himself.

The partnership between Nocturno Culto and Fenriz goes through a period of deep crisis. They would go on to play one final, very brief live performance (with Satyr joining on bass) at the Rockefeller Music Hall in Oslo. Afterward, the two make the irrevocable decision to stop performing live altogether as Darkthrone.

That same year Darkthrone released Goatlord, an album originally meant to be their second release after Soulside Journey, which never saw the light of day due to the band's change of direction. In fact, it's essentially a death metal compilation whose tracks date back to 1991. After various twists and reworkings throughout the Nineties, the duo finally decide to put the record out. It's certainly a document that captures well the stylistic shift of those turbulent years.

Ravishing Grimness, from 1999, opens up further toward a primordial thrash metal and a heavy-doom attitude that would carry increasing weight going forward. After three years of waiting, it's a release that confirms Nocturno and Fenriz's creature is still alive and well, and by now settled at Satyr's label.

Plaguewielder (2001), Hate Them (2003) and Sardonic Wrath (2004) do nothing more than cement a sound that's by now thoroughly road-tested and shows no significant new developments, consciously choosing not to follow any trend or any evolution of a genre they themselves helped create. The sound is less lo-fi and more carefully produced than on the black metal records released through Peaceville.

Despite enjoying a large following of devoted fans, Darkthrone go through a period of underground releases that are hardly memorable, continuing to oscillate between an old-school proto-black metal in the vein of Hellhammer/Celtic Frost and echoes of the glory days of Transilvanian Hunger, between the burst of brutality represented by Hate Them and the timid punk influences peeking through on the not-entirely-successful Sardonic Wrath.

Meanwhile, Fenriz keeps making headlines in his own right: he runs an important radio show, puts out compilations documenting the first wave of black metal from the Eighties (Fenriz Presents... The Best of Old-School Black Metal, 2004), gives interviews for the documentary "Until the Light Takes Us" (2008), and even runs for and wins local elections for the liberal Venstre party, becoming deputy councillor in the municipality of Oppegård in 2015. Clearly, the days of certain vitriolic statements capable of scandalizing the right-thinking public are now far behind him.

Nocturno Culto appears much more withdrawn and far from the spotlight. In 2007 he makes a documentary titled "The Misanthrope" and, alongside his work with Darkthrone, from 2008 becomes the singer of Sarke, another band straddling black, thrash and doom that looks especially to the first black metal wave.

The return to Peaceville and the change of style

In 2006 the duo caught almost everyone off guard with The Cult Is Alive, a blazing release that reveals a new style, one that blends punk and crust influences more smoothly within a black metal framework that rediscovers and plays up its "heavy" roots, projecting them into a kind of rough, caustic black'n'roll. Tracks like "Too Old Too Cold", which even got a video, show a sound in the vein of Motörhead, a burst of street-level rage that has, however, left behind much of the darkness and glacial coldness of "Under A Funeral Moon".

Take it or leave it: this is the duo's new course, as they return to Peaceville, the label that had dropped them years earlier.

With the follow-up F.O.A.D. (short for Fuck Off And Die), released the following year, they double down on what Darkthrone themselves called a sort of "New Wave Of Black Heavy Metal". It's a firm response to the criticism leveled at the previous album by many disappointed blackster fans. The duo couldn't care less, choosing instead to carry on undeterred down their own path. Indeed, Dark Thrones & Black Flags (2008) also keeps grinding out Venom and Motörhead worship as if there were no tomorrow.

Circle The Wagons (2010) is the usual parade of tracks forged in the fire of black'n'roll and crust-punk, erupting rawer and wilder than ever, while The Underground Resistance from 2013 leans even harder on the speed-metal component and also throws in some epic moments that will make more than a few fans wince.

The veterans play at being angry teenagers and, whatever the case, seem to be having a great deal of fun doing it, even if the results are a bit uneven.

A compilation like Introducing Darkthrone (2013) captures the Norwegians' journey well, one that always shows a radical consistency born of passion and musical exploration. While venturing through different territory, they always stick to "dark" and pagan paths, even when toying with different corners of metal.

With Artic Thunder, their 2016 album, Darkthrone's music blows a little extra cold wind once again, even though it still doesn't stray from a vintage proto-black metal capable of making every metalhead happy. In a world obsessed with "newism" and trends, what better way to deliberately keep your distance than to revive the spirit that animated Celtic Frost in 1985... The paradox being that the operation also wins a certain hype well beyond fans of black metal tout court.

Old Star, from 2019, proves, if proof were still needed, how the old star of Norwegian black metal keeps shining with a renewed sense of freedom. Without needing to cling to novelty, but reinterpreting the past with the right dedication, the duo confirm their status as metal legends allowed to get away with anything, even quoting AC/DC on "The Hardship Of The Scots". With tracks like "Duke Of Gloat" in particular, the duo find a perfect balance here, delivering one of the best releases of their recent period.

It has to be said that Vårjevndøgn, the Isengard album released in 2020, was a surprise. A good twenty-five years of waiting, and what lands in our hands is a new chapter of Fenriz's solo project — though this time, as the artist himself has stated, it's just material recorded between 1989 and 1993, forgotten in some tape drawer and now magically rediscovered. The album actually sounds like a kind of demo, entirely played and recorded by Fenriz in a pure DIY spirit. Fans of viking/black metal crossovers will find in their hands a work that looks mainly to Eighties metal, a sincere tribute to the cult bands that shaped the Norwegian musician's imagination. Conceptually, the move reads as a protest against a certain strand of modern metal, a glossy sound that has denied its own origins, polished and well-produced but short on soul. Sometimes, hearing the word "experimental" uttered by certain pretentious know-it-all music critics, who range from Captain Beefheart to pink-tinted "post metal", you feel like reaching for a gun, or for any random record in the Darkthrone discography. In that sense, being genuinely "true" like Fenriz is still a good and righteous thing. So let's take "Vårjevndøgn" as a reminder of a spirit that should never be forgotten. That said, the album as a whole is disappointing, save for a couple of successful episodes, among which the doom gem "The Light" deserves a mention.

Regardless of the verdict on their recent work, Darkthrone will go down in history for their "Unholy Trinity", a series of three albums (A Blaze In The Northern Sky, Under A Funeral Moon and Transilvanian Hunger), to which the wintry darkness of Panzerfaust can easily be added. These are records that truly made a difference at the time they were made, and that no true fan of black metal — and beyond — should be without, especially if, beyond the stylistic research and the genre's archaeology, one also looks at the radicalism of the content they express, which transcends metal itself.

Two years later comes Eternal Hails……, which they themselves have dubbed epic black heavy metal, though it could more simply be described as a doom-inflected proto-black: it's no coincidence that a track like "Hate Cloak" seems to be quoting both Celtic Frost (no surprise there) and Pentagram at once, even though there's really not much reason to cry miracle (the mid-paced passages don't leave much of an impression). Far better is the opening "His Master's Voice" (a speed start that closes with the brakes pulled tight), but above all the third track, "Wake Of The Awakened", eight minutes with a vaguely old-fashioned flavour that wouldn't have looked out of place on the underrated "Ravishing Grimness".

With the penultimate track, "Voyage To A North Pole Adrift", the doom approach makes itself felt again, but it's the riffs that fail to convince, despite the commendable attempt to shift gears several times within the same composition. The murky, musty production can only help so much, because in the face of this shamelessly vintage operation, a lack of ideas is all too evident. Luckily "Lost Arcane City Of Uppakra" puts the record back on track, helped by an evocative atmospheric epilogue that instantly ties in with the cover image: a piece made in 1972 by space artist David A. Hardy (actually already used by the Greek band Zephyrous for the CD reissue of one of their old demos), which projects this Norwegian duo into the heart of a distant, primordial planet — essentially a comfort zone that keeps thriving within these musicians' Eighties background.

If returning to the origins of chaos is Darkthrone's stated mission, it's also worth acknowledging that over time this goal risks becoming an end in itself, beyond a coherent and unshakeable old-school attitude. This also applies to Astral Fortress (2022), yet another work in which the recovery of the past nonetheless blends with a genuine, never forced approach. This time Darkthrone seem to want to take themselves less seriously, presenting the album with a rather curious cover (a figure gliding on ice skates) and with an approach less tied to doom (an element that had partly weighed down the previous record).

The opener, "Caravan Of Broken Ghosts", can be misleading: after a fine acoustic introduction, the Norwegians sharpen their weapons with one of the best tracks of their recent output, somewhere between nods to Bathory's epic grandeur and a crescendo that is purely heavy metal, in its dirtiest, rawest form.

While the following "Impeccable Caverns Of Satan" and "Stalagmite Necklace" still hold up well in terms of ideas and riffs, it's the second half of the album that leaves a bitter taste, especially when the duo slip dangerously into doom, over-stretching tracks that were already heavy to begin with (the ten minutes of the far too long-winded "The Sea Beneath The Seas Of The Sea").

This journey to recover the primordial roots of heavy music carries relentlessly on, first with the negligible "It Beckons Us All..." (2024) — probably the least inspired work in their entire discography — and then again with the recent "Pre-Historic Metal" (2026), where Fenriz and Nocturno Culto throw themselves into a paleolithic-themed imagery, between dinosaurs (the video for the title track) and crude speed metal sounds nonetheless muddied by passages closer to doom and blackened crust. There's something worth saving, but here too a passing grade feels pretty far off, not helped by a sound that at times even seems improvised. Sure, these days the two Norwegians can afford to coast on their legacy, but setting expectations too high could really leave a bitter taste, especially among the fans who have loved them since the early days.

Contributions by Paolo Chemnitz ("Old Star", "Eternal Hails......" and "Astral Fortress", "It Beckons Us All..." and "Pre-Historic Metal")

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