Circle the wagons, it’s indjuns! If anyone had said 18 years ago that Darkthrone would be playing melodic power metal, who’d have thunk it? Yet here they are, with their “difficult 15th album”, containing catchy sing-along-friendly choruses that you’ll find yourself humming in the shower. But that’s only in two of the songs. Don’t expect a big departure from their previous albums F.O.A.D. and Dark Thrones And Black Flags. They still play their own fusion of black, speed and heavy metal with touches of punk rawness and Motörhead.

Darkthrone nowadays are two songwriters and vocalists, both with strong identities, and on this album the balance is perfect, with every other song written and sung by Fenriz and every other song written and sung by Nocturno Culto. Fenriz aka “Mr. burnt out since 1995 after making twelve albums in two years” seems to be at another creative peak in recent years. Hopefully making only one album a year will keep the burnouts at bay. Twenty years after the debut album it’s a very different sounding band, but one ladder-step at the time (aka album by album) their evolution makes perfect sense. There’s a lot of force in this album, but nothing sounds forced. They clearly make exactly the kind of music they want to make, and the enthusiasm seeps through.

As well as containing aforementioned sing-a-long-friendly choruses (on opener “Those Treasures Will Never Befall You” and title track), Circle The Wagons contains their most epic songs since A Blaze In The Northern Sky, and with “Stylized Corpse” they hit the seven minute mark for the first time in almost ten years. There’s a song called “I Am The Working Class” with lyrics like “21 years of minimum wage, got no problem with manual labour”, and the chorus:

I am the working class! All day so I don’t have to see your face.
I am the working class! Discipline, the daybreak is when I begin.
I am the working class! Each day I bust my bones to get paid.
I am the working class! Damn straight, the daily grind is my fate.

New working class anthem? And there’s the expected verbal assaults on modern metal sound, as well as praising of old metal sound (lots of meta-metal here…), as in “I Am The Graves Of The 80s”, which contains the chorus: “I am the graves of the 80s, I am the risen dead, destroy their modern metal, and bang your fucking head!”. Just as we like it! The vocals for this song were recorded with a hi-hat mic, to get that good dirty sound. In this song there is also a good quote (taken from Gezol of Japanese black metal legends Sabbat) that describes their feelings toward the latter day black metal scene; “There’s way too much black, and there’s too little metal”. The fight against posers and modern ‘plastic’ sound goes on. And now they’re even more direct, for instance “ANTI-KING OV HELL 001″, that’s gotta hurt…

There’s a real 80s heavy metal vibe to the whole album, but it’s also unmistakably Darkthrone. Though their whole discography is a monument of constant change, you can say about every album that it sounds unmistakably Darkthrone, from their technical/progressive/occult death metal debut to their various shapes of black metal, and later punk-influenced heavy metal leanings. Comparing Darkthrone to other black metal groups is almost irrelevant, since they both wrote and broke so many rules. There was always a strong vibe of self authority to Darkthrone’s early albums, like they did exactly what they wanted and didn’t follow any rules. Many bands would try to copy this vibe, but didn’t realise that the very copying made them lose this self authority feeling. You can hear the difference between Darkthrone, having their unique style and vision, and a band playing like “this” or “that”, because “it almost sounds like Darkthrone”. So Darkthrone has always remained a step beyond all bands that followed. Whenever someone managed to approximate “that Darkthrone sound”, Darkthrone was already doing something completely different. There’s a zen saying; “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought”.

I can imagine some bands thinking “now it’s 2010, we’re almost in the future, we’re so modern”, well, think about this; the more modern times you get to live in, the older you get, while Darkthrone’s time travels back into days of old keep them young. Maybe this is why, no matter how “old” Darkthrone’s music seems, it sounds vital and fresh. The album is by no means trendy or modern, but I am willing to bet my bottom dollar that in 30 years it will sound a lot less dated than most other Norwegian metal releases in recent years (or years to come, for that matter). There’s enough soul, heart and guts in it to give it a timeless quality. It may be melodic (and yes, even hum-friendly at times), but enough rawness, savagery in it, to make you feel electrified and get that good old “kick” from it.

Nocturno Culto’s become a great lyricist, and Fenriz is a great singer (with an impressive range of vocal styles). Theoretically this could be their most “commercial” album, but in reality they dig so much into certain cult phenomena (speed metal, can you dig it?) that this will be mostly for fans of old heavy metal . But who knows? Maybe this album can open the real doors to heavy metal (not metaphorically speaking) for a whole new generation of people? Fenriz continues his “people enlightenment” and presents a list of ten albums you should hear, as in the previous albums. In addition to making music he has become a famous ambassador of other people’s music; his “Band of the week” on Darkthrone’s mySpace blog has now spawned its own festival in England (Live Evil), and this record also reflects parts of their record collections. They’re not only going back to the eighties, I can also hear some seventies elements.

What sets this album apart from its predecessors, for me, is that this is an album I really enjoy listening to from start to finish, never thinking about the skip button (especially since there is no skip button on my turntable, ha ha), while it’s hard to pick any immediate favourite song (but if I really, really gotta try, maybe opener “Those Treasures Will Never Befall You” plus title track and “Eyes Burst At Dawn”, but damn, all songs are good). On Dark Thrones And Black Flags I found myself usually only listening to “The Winds They Called The Dungeon Shaker”, “Hiking Metal Punks” and “Hanging Out In Haiger”. This time it’s a very cohesive ride. The songs fit well together, and there is enough variety throughout the record. I guess my favourite Darkthrone album will always have to be A Blaze In The Northern Sky (first cut is the deepest, perhaps, and I was only fourteen…), but this one is among the best records they’ve ever done. Highly recommended! Can’t wait for the next one…

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