Absolute Shit - "Arctic Thunder" Review (50%)
As much hate as Darkthrone's new Arctic Thunder album has (deservedly) received, thank god for it. Why? Because it is genuinely terrible. Arctic Thunder is completely, inexcusably awful.
There is no ability to say it was merely okay, or listenable, or tolerable: it is openly horrendous, leaving absolutely no doubt to the complete artistic failure that it embodies. It also leaves no question as to the utter depth of the misplaced passion the duo of musicians must have felt towards the music; there's absolutely no way to half-ass something as terrible.
It shows that, no matter how terrible the band may have become, Darkthrone is still dedicated to their craft, even if their overall level of skill has eroded to absolutely nothing. They are paraplegics attempting to run a marathon: it's disastrous and shameful, but god bless them for trying. They're still doing better than the person walking it, who in turn is miles ahead of the stadium cheerleader.
Death and black metal have been around for well over twenty years at this point; they are no longer secret and ethereal, least of all to fans and musicians within the genre. I have no doubt that just about any person out there these days with functional arms and ears could manage to create a 'tolerable' one-man black metal album, or, in many circumstances, go even further and create something openly pleasing to listen to.
It will probably not be the next Burzum, but at the very least it will be passable. Okay. Correct. A 'good effort'. The band will have 'showed promise'.
So many qualifiers that should make true black metal fans shake their head in disdain.
Absolute Shit
Making a 'decent' black metal album is no indication of an overall increase in skill among artists and musicians; merely that, at this point, everyone knows how to write decent, workable black or death metal riffs, and some intuitively grasp how to arrange the music in a coherent fashion. The tabs are all over the internet, and with downloading, those with careful ears can pull apart the technical aspects of their favorite bands with ease. Extreme metal has lost the challenge of its construction; everyone can make something 'listenable'.
But that's what it is: merely listenable. Truly great, enduring art, of course, goes above and beyond the merely tolerable and listenable and becomes something else entirely. It goes without saying, though, that these days I run across many plain, prosaic, inoffensive death or black metal records; many more than I do genuinely good ones.
In contrast to the older days of the genre, there's more 'good' (and I use that term loosely) metal albums than ever before simply because the tropes of the style have become so intensely codified in the public consciousness. If even Dimmu Borgir and Dark Funeral can book concerts for their particularly irritating brand of cargo cult black metal, even the most mediocre of Phantom clones - cough, Demonecromancy, cough - can be seen as the something more than a copycat tribute band.
Still, I find myself generating more rage towards the merely adequate than I ever have felt towards the openly awful. True awfulness is rarely arrived at through laziness or a lack of creativity: the genuinely terrible is usually a passionate but woefully misguided piece that indicates a catastrophic failure of understanding from the artist in question.
Mediocrity, on the other hand, most often arrives from refusal of work and willful ignorance than from misdirected artistry. In essence, mediocrity, much more than failure, is the antithesis of metal: it shows that a person was capable of more but chose not to. They didn't hitch their wagon to a star or even the moon; instead, they direct their sights somewhere down an artistic cul-de-sac, and usually one heavily explored by other bands before them.
The true poison of art isn't the utterly terrible like Arctic Thunder, but the plain and unassuming; those albums made by musicians who have no goals other than to create 'a black metal album' and evidence no understanding or creativity beyond merely copying the style of better bands.
Despite playing absolute shit music, Darkthrone remains the unquestionable superior to imitation bands like Watain and every Darkthrone clone ever. Arctic Thunder is closer to black metal than Gorgoroth could ever dream of being.
We could use more failure in the metal scene. Nu Darkthrone, I salute you while I hang you on the cross. We could all learn something from your example, even if it's just what not to do.
Arctic Thunder score: 50/100.
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