Darkthrone announced that the title and cover of their upcoming album, Arctic Thunder, shares a similar name with many breath mint brands and 1980s ski bro flicks. Hopefully this album is not phoned-in retro-heavy metal more disposable than an Altoids tin like The Underground Resistance was.
Fenriz posted on Darkthrone’s Facebook page:
Hi folks, it’s time to talk a bit about our new album – and as I don’t like to talk or write about music much I can say that it is more serious and primitive than usual. Vocals are only done by Ted as I thought this would create a more solemn/introvert atmosphere. The album is called ARCTIC THUNDER because it is my fave bandname (old mega-obscure Norwegian band from the 80s that I asked the permission from to use as an album title). Meanwhile here is the cover, it is from the personal camping archives from a trip some years ago to SPÅLSBERGET in Nordmarka. IT has the usual spruce-tree skyline and also a bonfire – there will be another limited colour version with orange logo and title, because that was MY favourite colour, but the usual release looks like this in silver – as this was Ted’s favourite version.
Tags: Arctic Thunder, Black Metal, darkthrone, Heavy Metal, upcoming release
Record sales have been in the toilet for the entire music industry. Making fancy expensive recordings these days is basically like doing welfare for a bunch of nihilistic jerks. I say the less Dark Thrones spends on this recording the better.
The expensive recordings tend to sound worse anyways as most modern “producers” suck and overmix everything digitally with tons of plugins; Erik Rutan albums all sound like shit for a reason: it’s all fake. A lot of the expense is really bands that don’t know what the fuck they’re doing needing a holding hand and tons of stuff fixed in mixing and post-production as they suck, the same with the C-list Florida death metal guys needing manual quantization and total sample replacement pre-computer while back in the 80s all somebody like Morbid Angel needed was to be recorded. Now you seem to just have guys like Darkthrone/Desecresy/Dead Congregation for bands that start with D that can just go in and bash out their material quickly as they can actually play, older bands who don’t give a fuck anymore at all like Immolation and Suffocation using EZdrummer, and bands who suck penis needing to have everything done for them as they were not prepared to enter the studio but in today’s Little League “me too” “equal opportunity” culture can get an album recorded and released in the “underground” for a few thousand bucks. I have a friend who wrote and home recorded a goregrind album in a day that got released.
I thought Darkthrone was proud of not making money with their music.
I suspect most ‘record sales’ are actually ‘back catalogue recordings sales’ and one can expect the number of these to go down over time even without resorting to conspiracy theories about ‘evil, new technologies’, especially not for more than 30 years in a row as in »home taping is killing music«.
There’s also some empiric evidence that people actually pay for the service of providing them with an organized collection of audio files plus some interesting meta-information like titles, band photos etc on a persistent storage medium, eg,
We heard you and you got it. Sevared Records will be re-printing Misshapen Congenital Entropy later on this year. stay tuned!
[from the Unfathomable Ruination ‘Zuckerberg’s advertising empire’ page]
Metal shows smell bad and breathe mints could be a positive.
In a world where there’s nothing but constant irony, dull provocations and supposedly mature indifference, Fenriz’s posturing is not even irritating anymore. But the shit he’s talking is probably symptomatic to his mental/spiritual condition. That’s all I need to know about D-Throne new album.
I thought Underground Resistance was a partial return to form. Not black metal form, per say.
I agree. UR got me back on board because it sounds like they’re starting to incorporate all those Agent Steel/Manilla Road influences into something personal again, rather than the emotionless record collector retro-metal of F.O.A.D or something.
Cautiously stoked for the new one.
You’ve convinced me to give UR a try for the first time. I’m finding all the heavy metal genetics more attractive than not. At least it doesn’t sound forced but it is pretty neutered compared to their first four classics.
Fenriz on Metallica’s ‘Master of Puppets’:
“This Metallica album meant a whole lot more for us Darkthrone kids than you probably believe.We all bought it when it came out. Roaming around Kolbotn with this on the walkman was another soundtrack of our youth.
And the shock of hearing about Cliff’s tragic death that year was and still is devastating. A great 30 year anniversary album and Ted and me are still sad that more bands didn’t seek out to explore the style of the ORION instrumental a bit more.”
Go on…
Oh yeah, I’m fat! You jealous?
“this would create a more solemn/introvert atmosphere” sounds like good..
I’m over it all.
Stayin underground & kvlt with a facebook page!
Yeah fuck that grown man for not being too cool and too cult for fan interaction.
Get ready for a slew of annoying interviews with Fenriz all over the web.
Just when I start forgetting metal died 2 decades ago, Darkthrone releases another rock album.
Panzerfaust was the last good Darkthrone album.
Was it? They basically stopped developing Celtic Frost to simply BE Celtic Frost.
Celtic Frost is good. Thus one can be good, if one is Celtic Frost.
Conqueror was Blasphemy Fallen Angel of Doom and sucked.
Conqueror was some dumbass alternating between two frets on the e string like a dumb punk bad as they chugged with some powerchords and samples from Kilar’s Dracula score to differentiate the songs. They also made the drums exactly twice as loud as the guitars to try to hide what they were doing.
Conqueror was basically a couple dudes who said, “Mensch, I really want to be in a metal band but I can’t think of a single riff.”
*Hears Fallen Angel of Doom once*
“Ah I don’t need riffs”
Naturally though FAD (prescient huh) was an accident of execution and technical issues. Whereas WCS is calculated charlatanism.
Technical issues?
The botched mastering for one. For two, the fact that everything was being played a pace just past the ability of the musicians to execute with clarity.
It’s not a guarantee to be good, but it’s possible.
Conqueror was a more poor example of the war metal sound. Same goes for black witchery. Both bands mindlessly tremolo picked chords attempting to be barbaric and bestial, but sounding bland. Revenge and bestial warlust were better.
Total death was pretty good!
The only people who I know of who do not feel “Leave No Cross Unturned” to be a true metal epic for the 2010’s are the writers at Metal Sucks.