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Darkthrone, The Underground Resistance: Blowing the Reactor

Posted in Reviews on March 5th, 2013 by JJ Koczan

The thing about Darkthrone some 25-plus years into their career is they don’t give a fuck. A lot of bands say that, but few say it as convincingly and have the fuckall in their approach to back it up that the long-running Norwegian duo seem to toss off on their records like so many squibbly riffs. Where that attitude has manifested itself over the course of their last several full-lengths as a raw, lo-fi punk aimed hard at the very roots of the black metal Darkthrone once pioneered on albums like A Blaze in the Northern Sky (1992) and Transylvanian Hunger (1994), their newest full-length and 16th by my count, The Underground Resistance (Peaceville), finds them blending that rawness with a traditional metal approach manifesting many of the influences they’ve claimed since 2007’s N.W.O.B.H.M – New Wave of Black Heavy Metal single signaled their transition from the blackened material of 2006’s The Cult is Alive — actually it was kind of stagnant — to later 2007’s F.O.A.D. (Fuck off and Die), at once a declaration and defense of its own stylistic shift.

But at this point, having pushed that punkish sound as far as it could go or at least as far as they were interested in pushing it with 2010’s bored-seeming-but-still-effective Circle the Wagons (review here), I honestly think that praise heaped on The Underground Resistance and harsh criticism of it sound the same in the ears of multi-instrumentalist/vocalists Ted “Nocturno Culto” Skjellum and Gylve “Fenriz” Nagell: It’s all just noise. If that’s actually the case, I don’t know, but it’s at least the perception and that character has become as much a part of Darkthrone‘s sound as Fenriz‘s campaigning on behalf of classic underground metal, so fervent that band recommendations on the last couple albums have come on a per-track basis in the liner notes, with Darkthrone cited on occasion as influencing themselves. All this makes the duo a fascinating entity, but ultimately has little to do with the music, which on The Underground Resistance remains as confrontational as ever in this semi-novel aesthetic sphere. The sound of the album’s six tracks is fuller and occasionally grander than that of Circle the Wagons or 2008’s Dark Thrones and Black Flags before it — as heavy metal was when it emerged early in the ’80s to distinguish itself from punk — but raw enough in its production to be called consistent. That is, between Nocturno Culto‘s trademark gurgle and the speedy gallop of the riffing on the penultimate “Come Warfare, the Entire Doom,” there’s little doubt you’re listening to a Darkthrone record, whatever kind of shenanigans they might be getting up to this time around.

And while homage is paid throughout the album’s 41 minutes to the likes of Manilla Road, Pagan AltarCeltic FrostBathory, Iron Maiden and Mercyful FateFenriz rounding out the album with some pretty mean King Diamond-style vocal drama on the 14-minute closer “Leave No Cross Unturned” — whatever sonic references they might be making are filtered through their own approach so that Darkthrone still sound like Darkthrone. I don’t know if I’d call The Underground Resistance re-energized as compares to Circle the Wagons, but as a band who’ve emerged as being pretty self-aware over the last decade or so, they probably could sense it was time for a change in their approach, even if it wasn’t a conscious decision between the two members as they wrote their individual parts. Three years is also the longest break between Darkthrone albums since 1996’s Goatlord and 1999’s Ravishing Grimness, and if the extra time was spent developing this material, I’d have to believe it. Even “Leave No Cross Unturned,” which seems to switch back and forth between Fenriz and Nocturno Culto parts, nonetheless winds up with one of the collection’s strongest hooks in its chorus with the oft-repeated title line. Finding earlier companionship on the album in “The Ones You Left Behind,” which works from a similar foundation musically, it’s all one could reasonably ask of a closer for an album like The Underground Resistance, which makes a weapon even of its most accessible moments.

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