Peaceville seem to be ravishing us with Darkthrone, not that this is grim at all if like me you are trying to piece together the Norwegian’s back catalogue. It seems nowhere near running out either and at this rate I am going to have to get an extra storage unit just to house Nocturno Culto and Fenriz musical overflow. Then again I could just line them all up against the toilet wall! Originally released on Moonfog in 1999 ‘Ravishing Grimness’ was the duos seventh studio album. It is an album of just six songs but they are fairly lengthy compositions honing in at around the 37 minute mark. They also see the duos song-writing going up a notch with the length of the numbers, there is a more doom-bound feeling and less of the barbarous black and death approach of old. Practically everything was written by Nocturno Culto this time around apart from ‘The Beast’ which is Fenriz animal. This edition again comes with a bonus ‘directors commentary’ disc and it works better leaving the pair to talk to each other rather than any clumsy solo oration and they reminisce amongst themselves giving the listener a good insight into the album.
We are literally whipped into action with ‘Lifeless,’ which is anything but. Gnarly and craggy are the words that spring to mind as the looping guitar riffs flow out unrestrained with doom laden finesse. The production here is more clearly defined, something that reportedly had the kvlt fans moaning at the time. The flagellating sound effects work quite well although the band possibly find them a bit cheesy now they are timed nicely to strike along with the music. ‘The Beast’ itself is next and grooves heavily like the bastard offspring of Venom and Motörhead compared to the Frostian vibe of its predecessor. This is pure rollicking rot n roll and sounds excellent as it chunders along. It’s a crawl into ‘The Claws Of Time’ but what a riff it has behind it, trembling away before the song bounds into a mid paced forage. If you pick this up on vinyl you have an excellent Side A make no mistake.
The vocal rasping and cleave of ‘Across The Vacuum’ is really feral sounding and the warped out ending of this particular track is unexpected too almost making your ears pop. The title track itself with jagged guitar work really gets beneath the skin. The doom laden tolling bell ringing away brings a sense of total dread. It’s still really craggy sounding and the artwork which accompanies the release really sums up the music, perhaps even better than the original design. Last number ‘To The Death (Under The King)’ is much faster as it blazes off through the forest with a punk like swagger about it injecting the album with a race to the finish kind of feel.
What else is there left to say? Well not a lot really, if you missed this first time round blah, blah; it’s Darkthrone fools, now go worship!
http://www.peaceville.com/darkthrone
Pete Woods
MTUK HOME
