One of the most emblematic black metal bands, the duo Darkthrone, are back to their black metal roots with “Artic Thunder”. Fusing a bit of rock n’roll in some riffs with their characteristic composing style, the listener can hear an exercise of black metal, primitive and serious, with the cold grimness feeling around the songs, typical from the Norwegian black metal bands.
Nocturno Culto did the vocals (on all the songs for the first time in recent years), guitars and bass, and Fenriz did the drums, and helped also with some guitars and bass. Songs like “Tundra Leech”, “Burial Bliss”, “Boreal Fiends”, and “Artic Thunder” will definitely delight the hears of the black metal puritans, due their raw and furious sound, also thanks to the mastering of Jack Control at Enormous Door.
Produced by the band itself, the sessions were conducted at the band’s old rehearsal unit, The Bomb Shelter, which was originally used during 1988-1990. “Inbred Vermin” and “Throw Me Through the Marshes”, explore the doom side of this record, which in any way make it slightly boring until the end of those tracks.
Despite of having nothing new or innovating, the listener will get the feeling that the record wins exactly for that, for its heaviness and a glued shaped atmosphere to the past. The last two songs “Deep Lake Tresspass”, and “The Wyoming Distance”, make the perfect match to end a record that will definitely, get a lot of hearings from the black metal crowd, and has the capacity of attracting new listeners to the Darkthrone camp.
7/10
