Dark Throne
Circle The Wagons

The goal of many artists is to create something unique, different and capable of carving out a place for themselves in history, whether it concerns music or other art forms. A certainly ambitious goal and not easy to achieve, where failure is always lurking around the corner, but for those who succeed, it is certainly a cause for great satisfaction and pride.

Darkthrone is definitely one of those bands that has managed not to be forgotten, shaping, through phenomenal albums like "Transilvanian Hunger" and "Panzerfaust," that evil and extreme variant of heavy metal that everyone calls Black Metal. Well, this very band for some time now has decided to set aside the same creature it helped forge to devote itself to something else, namely a deliberately raw interpretation of metal, dirty and with a typically "eighties" flavor, all characteristics that we find in the new "Circle The Wagons."

The journey that began with "The Cult Is Alive" and continued with the subsequent "F.O.A.D." and "Darkthrone & Black Flags," finds in this latest musical effort an ideal culmination, indeed we see that the black component typical of the nineties is now almost entirely absent, the songs are generally based on well-considered mid-tempo (forget about furious blast beats and "buzzing" guitars), punctuated by simple riffs, easily catchy choruses, a cleaner and less muddled production than usual, and finally by a voice that does not disdain truly impactful clean and epic passages. In my humble opinion, the Norwegian duo has truly hit the mark, finding the perfect balance between personality and the desire to re-propose "vintage" sounds, as evidenced by tracks like the wonderful "I Am The Graves Of The 80's" and the same "Circle The Wagons", the first with truly overwhelming choruses and a climactic ending while the second with its simple stride and catchy clean voice chorus that gets imprinted in your mind after the first listen and you unintentionally find yourself humming it while heading to school or to work. Another track to mention is the lengthy "Stylized Corpse", perhaps the most "anomalous" of the entire album, characterized by a slow pace and a harsher vocal that somewhat recalls the malignant atmospheres of albums before the Black'n Roll shift; it's definitely the least easy-listening song on the entire record.

In conclusion, we are faced with a quality product, played with passion and a desire to have fun and to entertain the listener, obviously, I do not recommend it to the most die-hard blacksters and to those who seek in metal extreme technicality or orchestral digressions, you will not find any of that here but only good old '80s metallic spirit, irreverent, brash and of splendid immediacy, which, however, does not undermine neither power nor impact, listen to believe! Before leaving you, a final note: the album was released, in addition to the standard CD version and vinyl, also in a splendid digipack variant, with a booklet containing biographical notes of the band written by Fenriz and a video track that will transport you directly into the world of these great Norwegian musicians.