Year: 2024
Label: Peaceville Records
Rating: 6,3 / 10
Do you hear these solemn sounds of celebration, these fanfares, these heated arguments of listeners, greeting the new DARKTHRONE album? I don't hear them, too. It's only been half a month, and "It Beckons Us All......” is already disappearing into informational oblivion. It seems that the pipeline of shallow releases from Fenriz and Nocturno Culto bored even the most devoted fanatics, although they, of course, never admit it. The Internet was briefly filled with fuckers who seriously call modern DARKTHRONE anti-poser music and spill their mind diarrhea all over, saying that this is real Black Metal, because its essence, believe it or not, is to do what you wish! Of course, DARKTHRONE themselves carry large part of the blame for the fact that the metal environment is now populated by such characters from the kunstkammer. The cult was alive, but they killed it.
If I used to expect a certain creative growth from DARKTHRONE after the punk period, now I expect just the opposite, that is, the final decline. After the strong “Arctic Thunder”, the band moved down only, and the lascivious announcements from Fenriz made the situation even worse. I will not repeat everything that I wrote earlier, because, after all, Fenriz confessed everything himself in one of the press releases. "First we made a riff in the style of this band, then we added acoustics in the style of this one, and then a riff in the style of that one, and on top we threw some chords in the style of some ancientshit, and how wonderful it turned out!”. I have only one question left: so where are the DARKTHRONE-style riffs?
But they are gone, and you can't tell for sure when it happened. There is a wonderful necrotic darkthrone-ish sound, (the drums are just gorgeous this time), there is an otherworldly atmosphere, and it's only for them that I return to the Norwegian band every time. But, unfortunately, another pot-pourri is served through this sound, a porridge of bored and tired riffs, forming equally bored and tired tracks. A bright place is "Black Dawn Affiliation", a really strong song. If the whole album consisted of such songs, then there would be something to talk about. The main riff of "Howling Primitive Colonies" and the finale of "The Lone Pines of the Lost Planet" are a couple more moments worthy of attention. Everything else is fillers, with which the band reaches 40+ minutes of overall length and adds another shallow album to the discography. To be honest, I haven't even read the lyrics, because last time was enough for me.
Due to the positive aspects mentioned above, this record leaves better impression than "Astral Fortress", which over time has established its status as a useless dummy. However, its worth is even lower, as it only further confirms that DARKTHRONE can still create good songs, but instead they throw garbage on the market every 2 years. Most of their modern music sounds more like rehearsal jamming, somehow recorded with full-length album quality.
English (UK) 
Крыўская