Squaring the Circular Square - "Circle the Wagons" Review (62%)
And here it is, the latest in a decade's worth of irrelevant releases from the 'turd cult' of DarkThrone. I'm sure quite a few metalheads will be shocked by what they find on this disc, and I'm equally sure I will find that reaction baffling. The truth is that Circle the Wagons is merely the culmination of internal trends obvious in DarkThrone's work dating back at least to Panzerfaust.
Many, perhaps most, fans will view Circle the Wagons as a radical departure from DarkThrone's previous work. After all, their career to this point, with all its inspired highs and insipid lows, has taken place entirely within the context of black and death metal, albeit with a bit of crust influences scattered here and there for 'exoticism'. Circle the Wagons, on the other hand, is essentially a straightforward cock rock release with a few isolated genuflections in the direction of black metal - vocals and the occasional more aggressively melodic turn, as in 'Black Mountain Totem'.
A careful listener, however, will notice that the techniques used here are not substantially different from that employed on Under a Funeral Moon or the band's other black metal landmarks of the early 1990s, which just goes to show how ephemeral the aesthetic divisions in extreme music really are. The real differences are not so easy to pin down.
The brilliance of DarkThrone's classic works of 1991-1993 lay in the ability of these albums to evoke ideas of great complexity through the careful manipulation of deceptively simple music. In this regard, these works are both intricate and highly advanced compositions despite being birthed from a spirit of atavistic primitivism, like most other extreme metal of the day.
The characteristic expression of this art took the form of basic tremolo picked riffs, over monotonous blast beat drumming, the result of which made gloriously ambiguous through extended phrases and a resolute refusal to allow melodies to resolve in any predictable fashion.
Squaring the Circular Square
Circle the Wagons retains a significant portion of the technique of DarkThrone's classic works, true. But it is technique only, as the spirit that once guided them down the path of black metal is long dead.
The feral beauty and ambiguity display on everything from Soulside Journey to, arguably, Panzerfaust are gone, and the riffs, while superficially similar, are rendered inert through shortened phrases and a tendency to pander to the dumbest members of the audience - fans of Immortal and Drudkh - by bringing each riff to the expected rhythmic and melodic conclusion, often done rhythmically so that the highlight of the riff matches the beat, almost like a retard anticipating to drool over the sight of his own feces.
Not surprisingly, Circle the Wagons is long on posing and showing contempt for its audience, and perilously short of any meaningful creative black metal impulse.
Anyone who already has the 'classic' works of Swedish clown act Demonecromancy has pretty much heard every riff on this album, and heard them without the annoying repetition and obnoxious 'ironically bad' production values.
The real crime isn't that DarkThrone ceased to play black metal, they had already done so a few albums prior. Their real crime is that they would release this sort of terrible album that has been so universally decried, that even Reinkaos manages to have a better rating on Metalious.
No, this isn't 'deep and profound' black metal, it's the same type of clown music that makes retards and - according to scientific evidence - at least a few species of chimps prefer brainless cock rock music, the type played by DarkThrone on Circle the Wagons, to superior art forms like black metal.
Because yes, black metal is superior to rock, and thus to this garbage Circle the Wagons.
Circle the Wagons score: 62/100.
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