Panzerfaust
Total Death
Goatlord
Label: Moonfog/The End
Rated: NONE
WorkNameSort: Panzerfaust
Total Death
Goatlord

“I really like the last three Darkthrone albums,” Orthrelm guitarist Mick Barr told Blastitude magazine. “They make the same record over and over again. It’s inspired me not to feel pressured to keep changing for change’s sake.” Indeed, the Norwegian black-metal titans have settled into a rut recently (though a return to glory-years label Peaceville for the Feb. 27 release The Cult Is Alive might reverse the spell of monotony), but a decade ago Darkthrone was known for radically revamping its approach with every album. These reissues hail from an especially elastic period in Darkthrone’s discography.

A disclaimer before discussing musical merits: These discs, like most black-metal reissues, restore the availability of out-of-print import titles without doing much to clarify the willfully mud-smothered production.

1995’s Panzerfaust stands with the best of the band’s Peaceville work. Relentlessly malevolent yet deceptively melodic, with gloomy guitars that march in stutter-step formations and solos that ascend to piercing peaks, it captures drummer/composer Fenriz at his most progressive. Lyrically, he explores fantasy realms with uncharacteristically malice-free language, peering into the “Eye of Uranus” and observing, “The grass here seems raped.” Of Darkthrone’s many rape references, this is by far the most benign.

Total Death seems faster-paced, though it’s difficult to tell because an impenetrable fog cloaks every track. Like a movie that keeps its monster concealed, the shadowy sound enhances the ominous mood, inviting imaginations to exaggerate its magnitude. Serrated crust-punk riffs, ominous pulsating basslines and Nocturno Culto’s vomiting-demon vocals sporadically escape the sonic suction. Fenriz and Culto keep their lines violent and direct (“penetrate your pure cunts with might”), leaving guest lyricists Garm (Arcturus) and Ihsahn (Emperor) to provide mythologically informed literary content.

Often slow and sludgy, Goatlord transfuses 1994 vocals from Fenriz and Satyr (Satyricon) onto discarded rehearsal tapes from the pivotal period between Darkthrone’s first and second albums, when it evolved from death metal to corpse-painted wickedness. Both vocalists sound as if they’re having fun (a brazen departure, given that black metal’s default singer setting seems to be “panicked torture victim”), and the doom-metal dirges settle into serious grooves. This twice-salvaged disc justifies the excavation effort.

This article appears in Feb 22-28, 2006.