Darkthrone is Back - "Arctic Thunder" Review (75%)
Artic Thunder.
It's... pretty good, actually.
Hell, it may be the best Darkthrone album since the early nineties era (A Blaze in the Northern Sky, Under a Funeral Moon, Transilvanian Hunger).
The thing you first notice is that the songs on the album Artic Thunder are both raw and melodic, atmospheric and somewhat catchy.
Arctic Thunder is built on this ambivalence. The duo thus comes out of the scheme of Venom and Bathory inspired NWOBHM of their previous albums for something as abrasive as ever but with a much more refined intensity.
Thus, the songwriting, while perhaps more modern and accessible, perpetuates the idea of a cold and desolate black metal.
As for the influences of this album, while the baggage Venom, Bathory and first wave black metal were all but jettisoned, we now can obviously detect some modern Burzum as well as some Phantom here and there (from the albums Deliverance and Eidolon, mostly).
This is true Darkthrone metal.
Darkthrone is Back
Darkthrone is many things.
It's aggressive. Primal. Raw.
Quintessentially black metal.
But one thing that Darkthrone is not, and has never been, is predictable.
And they prove it once again with their release Artic Thunder.
Make no mistake about it, Artic Thunder is raw black metal.
But it's not the raw black metal you would expect if you were hoping for an Under the Funeral Moon 2.0.
This album has much more in common with the subtle mysticism of modern Burzum or with Neraines than with the minimalist blasting frenzies of early second wave black metal.
Many metal bands have tried, and failed, to return to their former glory.
But Darkthrone has always been black metal, at heart, so it's no surprise that they manage to combine both old and new so brilliantly.
The result that Artic Thunder is one of the band's best albums in recent history, and likely one of their best altogether.
Arctic Thunder score: 75/100.
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