Nestling between ‘Ravishing Grimness and ‘Hate Them’ Darkthrone originally released their eighth studio album ‘Plaguewielder back in 2001 on Moonfog Productions. It is the latest reissue from Peaceville and comes with new artwork and a bonus disc of ‘director’s commentary observations’ from the ever entertaining Fenriz and wry Nocturno Culto. If you are new to this one and have been picking up these reissues you should have built up a nice big collection of the duos extensive repertoire and indeed they may well have necessitated a trip to that other well renowned Scando hell Ikea to house them all.

The guys are in the studio recording the commentary for this and ‘Hate Them,’ which we can assume is on the way soon in one hit. Fenriz seems to favour the latter but is very involved in being a nerd and dissecting what the riffs and tunes are reminiscent of. You get mentions of everything from Bathory, to Satyricon etched black n roll, Godflesh, Voivod and even prog rock which gets ole Ted unleashing a disbelieving snigger. Ted is also encouraged to do more dissecting himself but mentions these sessions give him more time to reflect upon the albums in a sagely fashion as once recorded they never really had the opportunity. They both talk about where they were at the time in life, Fenriz was suffering depression and Nocturno points out the fact that sound engineers for both this and ‘Hate Them’ are now dead, giving it all a morbid coating. These discs are fascinating and even if they are a bit like a BM equivalent of train spotting, I always give them the once over to gain insight of the albums themselves.

Onto that album. Well Plaguewielder is an exercise in grim and gnarly blackened metal that we had become accustomed to around the time with six long tracks hitting just under the 3/4 of an hour mark. Eerie groans and talk of death take us into ‘Weakling Avenger’ and we are hit by the first of many classic guitar lines on the album. To say they come at you like a veritable plague and stick in your memory over each and every track would not be selling things short. There are plenty of detractors of the album and reviews written around the time have people saying they were regurgitating old ideas and not adding anything new. Even Fenriz describes things as lazy at times but it has to me stood the test of time and there is nothing lazy about the furious buzz-saw riffs of numbers like ‘Raining Murder’ (blood was so out of fashion by now).

Songs do go for that rotten rolling groove occasionally; ‘Sin Origin’ is a prime example of this. Perhaps being on Mr Worngraven’s label was rubbing off although perhaps at the time Darkthrone were rubbing off on Mr Worngraven. Others such as ‘Commander’ start as much more feral, urgent and rabid; fast destructive swaggering motorbastards that defied their speed by sticking around twice as long as expected. The thunder and lightning is all so very frightening on this one too before the number lurches into a mid paced snarl with the nihilistic cry of “Nothing amounts to nothing” being retched out. The trembling riffs on the title track are excellent and it is like a gnarled oak being battered in a hurricane, being bent over, uprooted and dragged into the eye of the storm. I have to say that the new artwork on the album is better than the original; it just strikes as more in line with the music, very Tolkien looking and summing up a feeling of storm and strife.

All in all it’s another solid Darkthrone album. Now where the hell is that bastard Allan Key?

(7/10 Pete Woods)

http://www.peaceville.com/bands/2194