Darkthrone: Old Star (2019)

I am not really sure what Darkthrone is anymore.  Of course, during the Norwegian duo's long career, it has often been hard to really nail them down.  This is the band's 18th album and that is incredible.  At one time, they created the blueprint for every single lo-fi and bedroom black metal band with Transilvanian Hunger.  But despite that, Darkthrone has never really released the same album twice in a row.  At this point in their history, Darkthrone releases a new album every few years and remain champions of underground metal (the band did after all have a hand in the emergence of Ghost from obscurity).

Old Star sees Darkthrone utilize their standard format.  Fenriz and Nocturno Culto each contributed three songs to the album, and it is often somewhat easy to tell which song was written by which member.  Fenriz's songs generally exhibit more of an old school metal influence, while there are moments in the Nocturno Culto tracks that call back to the more black metal style of the early days of the band.  There is also a lot of German thrash and Celtic Frost influence in some of the riffs.

The biggest musical shift on this release is the heavy doom metal influence.  Fenriz did boast that the album had a lot of Candlemass-style riffs, and that is accurate.  The songs on this release tend to be much longer and slower than on albums that have come before.  There are a couple of much faster tracks, with some impressive galloping riffs, such as on "Duke of Gloat" and "The Hardship of the Scots".  Of course even Candlemass had some faster songs, so this is not totally foreign to doom metal. 

It is not all positive however.  Some of the songs do tend to drag a little bit, and in general the Fenriz tracks are not quite as good as the ones penned by Nocturno Culto.  Several songs are on the longer side, and the slower tempo make them seem even longer.  Obviously a big part of this is the doom metal influence, which is a little new on a Darkthrone album.

I try to check out every new Darkthrone album, but I have missed several.  That being said, I love the classic metal influences Darkthrone has been incorporating over the last several releases.  This is a terrific release, though I do still prefer Circle the Wagons for latter-era Darkthrone.