Darkthrone

On a cold, dark Norwegian night, a blaze in the sky changed the face of heavy metal forever, raising the bar even higher: this is "A Blaze In The Northern Sky", one of the defining albums of the so-called second wave, a black tide that unleashed the genius and derangement of Mayhem, Immortal, Burzum and so on. In short, true norwegian black metal, stories and legends that barged straight into the imagination of every extreme music fan.

Why call it a second wave when, strictly speaking, there was no first wave? True, throughout the Eighties there were plenty of seeds in the ground, but the flowers of evil had yet to bloom. Venom ("Black Metal" is the title of one of their albums), Celtic Frost (who inspired entire generations), Sodom (whose primitive Teutonic thrash carried real weight in the development of extreme metal), and then Sarcofago, Mercyful Fate, Bulldozer, Master's Hammer, Törr and Tormentor: these roots have always had a unique and special flavour, even though they developed separately and without any real sense of a shared movement. Everything sounded evil and vicious, much like Mayhem's "Deathcrush" (1987) or the underground "December Moon" (1987) by Morbid (featuring the late Dead on vocals), but in the Eighties black metal still lacked a real shape and substance (Bathory, on the other hand, are the classic exception that proves the rule).

Before 1992, Darkthrone were mildly appreciated but little known. They already had four demos behind them, waiting on a debut ("Soulside Journey") steeped in death metal (a genre that was churning out a long string of masterpieces at the time, including in neighbouring Sweden). But up there in Norway, everyone was feeding off each other, if only by hanging around Euronymous of Mayhem's record shop (Helvete, a cult hangout in Oslo).

The revolution was underway, as Fenriz and Nocturno Culto (here joined by Zephyrous and an uncredited Dag Nielsen, who was on his way out) turned the tables, leaving Peaceville - the label that had just released "Soulside Journey" - stunned. Still, after the initial shock and hesitation, Peaceville gave the band free rein, a trust that remains mutual and unshaken to this day (aside from a brief spell on Moonfog, Darkthrone have always recorded for the British label).

Iconographically speaking, this album marks the definitive entry into a new world: on the strictly black-and-white cover, Zephyrous's body looms menacingly out of the darkness, hinting (with a sneer) at the visceral scream we would see two years later on the cover of "Transilvanian Hunger".

Darkthrone's imagery conjures truly harrowing sensations, as if a thin line connected Norwegian painter Edvard Munch's most famous work ("Skrik") to the inner torment at the heart of black metal. A terrifying, all-consuming passing of the torch.

The band's lo-fi approach marks a primordial return to Norse paganism, where corpse paint is nothing but a ritual mask worn in absolute communion with the surrounding nature ("Where the days are dark and night the same, moonlight drank the blood of a thousand pagan men", as the lyrics of the title track put it). "A Blaze In The Northern Sky" thus celebrates the dark forces that rule the Scandinavian night ("Where Cold Winds Blow" and "Pagan Winter" are two unmistakable titles), setting in motion themes that would go on to become central to the genre we hold dear.

The music itself is raw, radical and obsessive, though it's worth stressing that "A Blaze In The Northern Sky" was the product of a transition rather than an already fully charted path. On this record, some riffs conceived for death metal are reworked in a black metal vein: it's no coincidence that only with the following "Under A Funeral Moon" (1993) would the songwriting turn exclusively toward the new direction (murkier sound, ever more frostbitten screams and an utterly irreversible bleakness). Even so, the malevolent impulse is already born within these grooves, sending chills down the spine.

The opener "Kathaarian Life Code" is an unforgettable gut-punch, its own evolution leaving you breathless: blast beats, unprecedented malice and a mid-song break worthy of the best 80s-era Bathory. Ten minutes devoted entirely to deep blackness.

But if we want to find the real bridge between the first and second wave, we have to wait for the following "In The Shadows Of The Horns", a measured passage steeped in Celtic Frost to the bone. Here Fenriz and Nocturno Culto lay their souls bare, none too subtly reviving that background of punk rock and filthy, blasphemous heavy metal, influences the two Norwegians would later let explode across their vast discography.

Either way, rather than dissecting the album track by track, "A Blaze In The Northern Sky" should be regarded as a single forty-two-minute monolith, a pillar as essential as it is unforgettable within a scene about which everything and its opposite has already been said. Darkthrone, fortunately, were only brushed by the grim real-life events that unfolded in Norway in the early Nineties: they chose misanthropy over action, sarcasm over provocation, retreating instead into the most intimate sphere of chaos. All it takes is a blaze in the Northern sky - the rest follows on its own.

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08/01/2023