DARKTHRONE - Old Star
Peaceville Records
OK in all honesty yeah I'm a DARKTHRONE fan as in yes I have all of their full length releases. No compilations of course, fuck those things. But I must say that their past couple of albums (2013's The Underground Resistance and Arctic Thunder from 2016) were definitely lacking in memorable substance. Obviously this is what happens when you mine the fuck out of a genre for all it's worth while trying to maintain your identity.
That seems to be the case after their blackened speed metal trilogy was done where do you go next? Go back to second wave black metal? Ha! Yeah right like that was gonna happen. So The Underground Resistance was basically a hodgepodge of the speed metal trilogy plus a taste of straight up blackened 80's metal. To me it was boring. Next came Arctic Thunder which despite what it's title suggested was just the band trying to work out that blackened heavy metal/doom sound out. Unfortunately I thought the results were once again poor.
But hey it's DARKTHRONE we're talking about here and I can honestly say their early 2000's output wasn't so memorable either. But they came back and that's what you hear on this their eighteenth album. Despite some of the early assumptions that this was going to be all doom album, from the early teaser track release of "The Hardship of the Scots". It's really not. It's mining of the HELLHAMMER/CELTIC FROST style which they've done before, albeit this time around it's better.
Basically you've got some good quality rocking numbers with simple beats, good steady riffs and of course Nocturno Culto's patented rasps which by this point in the game should be trademarked. "I Muffle Your Inner Choir" is one of the best openers they've done in years. There's also the doomier cuts like the a fore mentioned "The Hardship of the Scots", the title cut as well as "Alp Man". You could probably throw TROUBLE and PENTAGRAM in to their influential mixture for this album. Old Star is DARKTHRONE's latest genre experiment done right.
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