Darkthrone - A Blaze in the Northern Sky

What the hell happened between Soulside Journey and Under a Funeral Moon? To paraphrase Fenriz, they flocked up. Neither black metal nor death metal proper, A Blaze in the Northern Sky sees Darkthrone combine the worst elements of the two genres, and adding some three chord 1950s crooner rock random punk to give way to Hellhammer inspired trudging, repetitive, but distinctive tune which like black metal songs iterate a single riff multiple times to attempt to produce an atmosphere of darkness and evil.

In a few words, it doesn't work. No just compare to Under a Funeral Moon and Transilvanian Hunger, but as an album A Blaze in the Northern Sky fails on more than one level. Few of the riffs and none of the compositions - minus the first two Kathaarian Life Code and In the Shadow of the Horns - are interesting enough, and generally what little atmosphere there is finds itself neutered by the relative poor, compared to their previous album, songwriting.

The riffs are too sing-along to be evil, too spacey to be brutal, and too predictable to be interesting, a flaw Darkthrone carries on from Soulside Journey, but at least that album had good songwriting that knew how to use these relatively poor riffs to create good songs. Nothing of the sort happens on A Blaze in the Northern Sky to save this sophomore Darkthrone release from its mediocrity.

Prefer either the previous Darkthrone album, or the next two. A Blaze in the Northern Sky is off the Morsay list for a reason.

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