Darkthrone
Ravishing Grimness

THE REVIEW

Nietzschean fury, creeping sounds of arcane memory.

A sense of "ancient" pain flows through macabre notes, sometimes slow and obsessive, other times quickly brutal and barbaric. Absurd voices rasping a blinding pessimism, vibrant distorted harmonies that slice the air celebrating the cult of emptiness, of nothingness, of negative absolutism. The song of poison, the sulfurous hymn to isolation and the rediscovery of the self, so pitifully abandoned by centuries of perpetuated nostalgia and illusions.

The return of the misanthropic Norwegians after three years of silence is celebrated with this icy creature by the name of "Ravishing Grimness", a sonic celebration of a stylistic change in their offering, yet fervently anchored to the hated/loved patterns that made them famous. The "eerie sound" howls venomously in the opening track "Lifeless", a slow ride amidst cascades of liquid guitars, whose ignobly wicked melodies are "narrated" by the vitriol spat out by the throat of the well-known Nocturno Culto. The ending is enriched with murderous accelerations and a lyricism with no trace of hope whatsoever...
Deadly is the anthem of the rapid and "urgent" "The Beast", reminiscent of putrescent memories in early Celtic Frost style, with drumming launched towards the blackest oblivion and incandescent screams of vomited terror surrounding this delirium of hateful beastliness. Pachydermic and suffocating in the introductory riff "The claws of time" it martyrs with a melancholic stride, the nostalgic hymn of hermits lost in timeless forests. Chilling melodies make it unique and enthralling.

Tremendously, "symphonically" brutal, are "Across the vacuum" and "Ravishing grimness" where fast and abrasive riffs clash with the devastating onslaught of Fenriz's perfect drumming, skillfully juggling the tempos, giving the instrument the typical "black" sound that rendered it immortal. The production slowly becomes clearer and offers the opportunity to better appreciate the duo’s qualities, without neglecting the typically Norwegian abrasive roughness.
Lethal closure entrusted to the furious black-thrash assault of "To the death(under the king)", which recalls the morbid past of Darkthrone and merges it with the "garage" fury of early Bathory. Fearsome is the singer's bark, the scream of a possessed witch, desperately elusive among solitary woods.

The return of the icons of the most misanthropic metal, destined to open a new era of highly inspired works, yet "nostalgically" anchored to the glorious past. Poisonous and icy "Ravishing grimness" embodies the fury of piercing, endless snow storms.

Fear it.