If you don’t know Darkthrone then I suggest before reading this review you go and do some research because trying to plot their history here would probably be a boring exercise for you to read. The basics are that they were a part of the infamous Norwegian Black Metal scene of the 90s and pumped out a classic trilogy of albums in A Blaze In The Northern Sky, Under A Funeral Moon and Transylvanian Hunger. These albums are essential for budding advocates of true Metal I would argue, but after those there’s a mish-mash of various styles, probably most notably Heavy Metal. The albums F.O.A.D. and Circle The Wagons being some of my favourites from their stylistic changes. That said they remain interesting and as such today I’ll be reviewing their huge twenty first album It Beckons Us All……. from Peaceville Records.
Opening with some initial almost Dungeon Synth tones before getting into the true Metal fray is Howling Primitive Colonies. Atypical Blackened Heavy Metal punches through with the tones so often associated with modern Darkthrone. The echo laden vocals come rasping through amid the almost progressive, Doom laden guitars. Essentially simple but as ever effective. Eon 3 injects a bit more speed, the guitars really start to come alive with more inventive riffs. It’s absolutely a more interesting song but still falls into the simple but effective category, maybe a bit too much. Likewise comes Black Dawn Affiliation, it’s actually just quite bland, I mean it’s good but I can’t really say exactly why. Darkthrone at least in the modern sense are a total blueprint for true Metal, however I fear this has almost become their gimmick now and the means of genuinely quality song-writing has somewhat been lost along the way.
Crossing the middle of the release is the instrumental And In That Moment I Knew The Answer, which again is fine. It’s a perfectly adequate instrumental, utterly pointless really, a bit like Fenriz and Nocturno just couldn’t be bothered to add some lyrics, but all the same it’s decent sounding. Back into the meat of the record comes The Bird People Of Nordland which is again fine, actually maybe one of my favourites from the record. It’s slightly more dynamic than other songs and a bit more on the memorable side. Still the depressive almost Doom riffs cascade but this is certainly a highlight. The Heavy Hand passes without incident, another acceptable but not very exciting track. The final song The Lone Pines Of The Lost Planet breaches the ten minute mark and develops with a Prog style format, again another highlight. It works very well and honestly I would take more of these longer songs over various filler tracks any day.
So is It Beckons Us All……. bad? No, it’s fine, it’s another modern Darkthrone album to add to the heap. Honestly it’s quite an enjoyable listen, the kind of album I’d put on whilst gaming and go ‘that was alright’ and then probably never listen to again, well maybe I’d give it another go. Which is honestly more praise than I could give a lot of releases. I’m glad Darkthrone are still putting out music because despite the missteps they occasionally drop a banger. Their material is also so varied that they remain unpredictable, you never really know what is coming next, so with that I guess we just have to wait for the next era.
(7/10 George Caley)
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