Metal Marathons #001: Part 1 - Darkthrone: The Nineties

 Part one of two

There's always been something greatly enjoyable about listening to a lot of a band's discography, or all of it, at once. Well, not at once, that wouldn't sound very nice; but certainly listening to it in order carries a lot of fun with it. A few months ago I decided I might do features where I reviewed discographies, instead of just lone albums, and for some reason, I decided to start with Darkthrone. A few months later, of realising I really don't quite have enough hours in the day to do the band's whole discography, I've decided to break the marathon into two more digestible sections. Cheating, essentially, but it seemed to be a choice between doing it this way, or not at all.

As a band, Darkthrone really need no introduction; one of the most hard-working and productive pillars of the Norwegian black metal scene, and more recently of the Norwegian metal scene in general, Darkthrone have a discography which is fantastically varied but all utterly Darkthrone. Interestingly, I suppose the marathon begins with the album which sounds the least close to the band's trademark sound; Soulside Journey.

I don't exaggerate when I consider Soulside Journey to be among my favourite death metal records, and merely on the basis that it's not the music which Darkthrone are famous for is never a sufficient reason to dismiss it. Soulside Journey is murky, churning and thoroughly evil old-school death metal; technical, and compositionally quite ingenious. It's the kind of album which can draw you in susprisingly well, and it certainly showcases the penchant for evil-sounding music the band had which would certainly be dominating their music later on. The resultant eerie death metal is well deserving of a listen by anyone who has dreamed up reasons not to have listened already.

I first listened to A Blaze in the Northern Sky on Halloween, in the dark - I wanted to listen to some dark music, and this album provided it excellently. People who really enjoyed Darkthrone on the strength of Soulside Journey must have gotten quite a shock indeed when they heard A Blaze in the Northern Sky - a very, very different monster indeed. Instead of thick but solid production, the album is incredibly rough and fuzzy, with a guitar tone like electric sheep-shears which, instead of sounding amusing, succeeds in sounding fantastically evil, accompanying the scathing vocals. Of all of the bands records, this is the most diabolical, and the long songs certainly help it achieve a sort of satanic majesty.

 By the time that Under a Funeral Moon came out, black metal was very much coming into its own - a fact which is reflected in this album's recipe. While the embryonic take on black metal that A Blaze in the Northern Sky created is still present, on this record the songs are shorter, and altogether feel closer to the emerging "convention" of black metal. Under A Funeral Moon is, of course, not derivative in the slightest, but was instead a setter of this convention. The combination of retaining the previous records dark majesty and scathing guitar tone, and combining it with a more punchy, rapid-fire approach creates what is, quite possibly, one of my favourite "classic" Darkthrone records.

Transilvanian Hunger was the first Darkthrone album not to feature guitarist Zephyrous, and you can sort of tell; the record manages to be atmospheric, and indeed even more intense and evil sounding than a lot of Under a Funeral Moon was, but at the same time, it's not quite the same; not a bad different, but nonetheless different, particularly with regards to the style of lead guitar. As an album, Transilvanian hunger is more aggressive, and is typically very unrelenting; a characteristic in which is outdoes every other Darkthrone release with relative ease. While I prefer the atmosphere and more hook-laden feel of Under A Funeral Moon, this album is generally likewise a great pleasure to listen to.

Panzerfaust is something of a continuation of Transilvanian Hunger, with the subtle difference that the band remembered that they were allowed to play slower bits too. If the previous albums were icy, Panzerfaust feels more akin to snow; velvety, and with the same chill, but much more primitive and primal; songs like Quintessence feel at once hypnotic, wrathful and powerful. The vocals on this record are loud, but lack the scathing, demonic feel they had, particularly on Under A Funeral Moon, perhaps the main cause for the album feeling more enraged than occult. Consequently, the real draw of the album for me, at least, is that the riffs are extremely raw and pronounced, packed with energy and intensity.

I quite like Total Death. It may represent the beginning of the "wilderness" which Darkthrone vanished into during the late nineties, but I still enjoy it as an album. The magic of the first five records isn't quite oozing out of it, but at the same time, it still has a certain feel of cohesiveness and bite. There are snowy melodies in the same vein as Panzerfaust, but also an inclination further towards more simplistic, old-school forms of black-metal, namely the first wave, with riffs in that style making themselves known every now and again, perhaps representative of Fenriz' deep attraction towards the old-school beginning to push aside and transform any concious affiliation for the second-wave black-metal scene.
 

I'd probably never listen to Goatlord other than to find out what it sounded like, or whilst I'm doing a Darkthrone marathon... The whole premise doesn't appeal to me; It's a rehearsal tape from before A Blaze in the Northern Sky with a few finishing touches placed upon it. All in all, while you get the feeling that the music could have been great, the recording quality doesn't do it any good, and the finishing touches too, can at times feel a little clunky, like the "female" vocals which probably aren't. Goatlord always felt to me like a line in the sand of Darkthrone's discography; the "old" Darkthrone before it, and the "new" after. All in all, it's a diamond in the rough, but most of the time, the rough feels just too rough.

Albums like Ravishing Grimness can't really be written off as "more of the same", quite simply because that's not quite what they are. Like much of the "middle era" material, Ravishing Grimness is a swaggering, extremely course and primitive work; in this case, it manifests itself sounding like a slightly concussed version of Panzerfaust, where each chord in many of the riffs and rhythms are  emphasised to give it an enormity. Like Panzerfaust, it manages to dynamically flit through various tempos, and certainly maintains a very true black-metal sound, albeit injected with a bit of piss and vinegar, especially tracks like "The Beast" which really foreshadow the direction the band would soon take.

And so, the band's course through the nineties was examined. But what happened after that? Well, It's taken quite a while to write this, and there are many, many more albums to look at, so I'm going to take a break, come back in a few days to tell you about those. 

I hope you've enjoyed this so far. 

Links:
Darkthrone Official Site
Darkthrone on Facebook
Darkthrone on Metal Archives

#277 Diamond Head - Lightning to The Nations

I'm really knackered. That's not really relevant to this review, but if you espy any sentences which end in smiley faces or suddenly veer into entirely different avenues of context, you'll know why. Anyways, on to the main topic of the day; Diamond Head, and more specifically their début album,  "Lightning to the Nations", an undisputed classic of the NWOBHM, and an album which can be said, with only a little bit of hyperbole, to have influenced more or less every metal band conceivable. 

What you get in Lightning to the Nations is essentially solid-as-a-rock NWOBHM with a penchant for sex-noises during the solos, or at least, enough for me to decide to mention them. More important, however, is the former description; Solid as a rock. Lightning to the Nations really is one of those albums where either the filler is so good that we don't notice it's filler, or it's non-existent. You can't be sure, and either way the result is the same -  there isn't a single track on the album which I'd consider sub-par, through its whole length. Even the less famous tracks - for instance "Sweet and Innocent" are solid. A second observation about the record is that it's damn heavy. The chunky guitar tone really combines with the intense playing and rough, clattering production-values to create something which, while not quite "Welcome to Hell" by any stretch, really shows off a rough and raw edge which a lot of NWOBHM bands were more content to polish and shine their material. I can safely say I prefer the way Diamond Head did things - initially self-releasing the record, and evidently recording it on a lowish budget. The resultant record just has a genuine and very energetic feel which is extremely well preserved by the attitude with which the band created it; the same energy and enthusiasm seeps from it that you often pick up on similarly exciting records by artists who were really pushing the envelope; Kill 'Em All, Show No Mercy, even Burzum's self-titled shares a sort of exuberant and novel feel in the music - there's a certain sound which accompanies a record being utterly non-derivative, and Lightning to the Nations certainly has it.

Of all of the NWOHBM records I've lent my ear to, I think Lightning to the Nations is one of the most thrashy; certainly, the riffs and general style of the band was hugely influential to Metallica, and when you listen to them, you can see exactly where the influence lies. Songs like Am I Evil? are very, very proto-thrash indeed, in fact, as far as I'm concerned, when the first fast riff of the song kicks in, that's the sound that thrash being invented makes. The band certainly weren't afraid of a little breakneck speed, especially in tracks like "The Prince", which hurtle along quite fast even by today's standards. Certainly, the causal grindcore enthusiast might look at the riffs and tempo in the way someone designing a train today looks at Stevenson's Rocket, but at the same time, perhaps there's more than a little possibility that Diamond Head's speed was as influential as their playing, to the rest of the NWOBHM and well beyond. When you consider that, to my knowledge, Metallica have covered five of the seven songs on the record, you really get the scent of how influential Diamond Head were. Perhaps engaging a lot of hyperbole indeed, a journalist, I'm told, stated that "There are more good riffs in a single Diamond Head song than there are in the first four Black Sabbath albums". Maybe not quite, but there's certainly a degree of truth to the overall proclamation; Diamond Head's riffs are really good. I wouldn't go as far as he did - good lord no - but you just need to listen to a track or two to really soak up the monumental prowess of the riff work.

It's a bit of a sad story how rapidly Diamond Head declined after the first couple of records; sinking not so much into obscurity, but by all accounts mediocrity. It's much better to dwell on just how good this album is, however, than lamenting the fact that they didn't make many more like it. Lightning to the Nations is utterly deserving of a classic status, which, for the most part, it has rightfully claimed.

This is 10/10.

Links:
Diamond Head Official Site
Diamond Head on Facebook
Diamond Head on Metal Archives

#276 Ratt - Invasion of Your Privacy

There is music from over ten minutes ago which is well worth listening to - contrary to what the mouth-breathing denizens of the world around me, who describe songs from 2010 as "an old one", might believe on the matter. Even us who weren't, like myself, alive at the time can nonetheless live the eighties music vicariously through the soundtrack of Vice City. Don't lie, that game was probably the biggest importer of glam-metal into our teenage lives. To cut a long story short, I'm going to review some Ratt tonight, for two reasons; firstly, my internet-connection is terminally ill and can't stream anything, and I have Ratt vinyl, and two, I genuinely enjoy their music.

This review, I think, is going to be half-and-half a review explicitly of Invasion of Your Privacy, and a few general thoughts on glam in general. It's very beneficial that albums like this one do a very representative job of glam, and Invasion of Your Privacy really has it all. The record is typified by mid-tempo, crotch waving, swaggering and sugary simplistic tracks which provide the perfect backdrop to arriving at the party, seducing all of the unrealistically attractive and attainable supermodels present, driving them back home in an expensive sports-car, down a desert highway with the wind in your hair, and then screwing them afterwards, which, let's be honest, is more or less what listening to glam makes everyone think of. Probably cocaine as well. When it comes down to it, one of the fundamental reasons that I like glam is that it captures the reckless spirit of rock n' roll, and distills it into something even more catchy, sensual, and, dare I say, rather manufactured indeed. It's distorted, growling electric guitar dressed up in something leopard print, drinking cocktails instead of slaying dragons and invoking Satan, which is without a doubt what the "true" genres of metal were busying themselves with. Invasion of Your Privacy is a neon-lit exhibition into how fun a few riffs can be when they're stuck together with some massive choruses and more than a little ear for being memorable and catchy. Glam is the music which every party needs, but too few are equipped with. Safe to say, this album would be a great start.

As glam goes, Ratt manage to retain quite a lot of the metal element in the music, and the guitar sound and tone is certainly loud enough to exude energy and power, whilst being pleasantly hooky. The power chords tend to have a pleasingly hefty thump to them, albeit still very friendly to listen to; it's the kind of thing that nobody could complain about. The music then, unsurprisingly, is absoloutely not "intense" by anyone's standards; pleasantly plodding, and mostly in simple time signatures, albeit, and thank the lord, not quite to the extent AC/DC is. The tempo remains very uncompromisingly in the middle, which,  on the whole makes for something very relaxed and laid back, which is perhaps one of the fundamental features of Ratt's music; that is, being very mellow, not just with regards to being radio-friendly - bands like Motley Crue managed to play-fast whilst being very radio friendly indeed, instead, you get the impression that Ratt just aren't a fast band with regards to the sort of music they wrote; intrinsically mid-tempo, if you will. The sort of music which you always hope might come on the moment you walk into a nightclub. Sadly, I'd expect nowadays that an infestation of moustachioed bloody hipsters listening to glam ironically would really put me off. That, in fact, is something I really want to mention; I don't listen to glam ironically, that's why I don't particularly enjoy bands like Steel Panther, who do. I like glam for what glam is; and like the rest of metal, it's escapist music - it's just that when you listen to Invasion of your Privacy, you escape to the mid-eighties and a neon-lit night, instead of somewhere further away and darker.

I suppose it'll be back to something a little heavier next time I write a review, but before then, I think I'll dig out and listen to a few more of the Ratt LPs I've got somewhere, and I think I can safely say that it'll be worth it. In 2013, glam is, frankly, dead as a stone. In 1983 it wasn't, and just because it's not a thing any more doesn't mean it doesn't still kick-ass, thirty years down the line.

A solid 7/10 record.

Links:
Ratt Official Site
Ratt on Facebook