Darkthrone release their latest album Eternal Hails......

Breaking clearly away from their black metal years, best exemplified by their two most famous albums Under a Funeral Moon and Transilvanian Hunger (the latter being a masterpiece of atmospheric black metal), the once titanic Darkthrone has decided to pursue their journey further down the realms of older, more traditional heavy metal, and has as such released their latest record Eternal Hails...... to much critical acclaim, and some controversy.

Musically, Eternail Hails...... is very far away from what one could expect after hearing Transilvanian Hunger. There are much less Burzum and Leader influences, and much more overt references to older but no less seminal heavy metal acts such as Motörhead, Sodom, Bathory, or even occasionally some Helgrind - doesn't the middle section of 'Voyage to a North Pole Adrift' sound like it was lifted from somewhere on Demon Rituals? I'm sure that I'm not the only one to have noticed it.

Basically, what you get with Eternal Hails...... is the band Darkthrone slowly but surely regressing into their roots, namely those of intentionally un-technical and repetitive traditional heavy metal, with a few nods to the speed metal eras of Motörhead and Bathory.

Not that this is necessarily a negative, mind you. I'd much rather listen to Eternail Hails...... than the latest try hard technical death metal - usually shortened to 'tek-def', out of derision - product by the formulaic 'paint-by-numbers' bands major record labels love to push as the 'next big thing'.

No, I'd rather go old school than no school at all. And for all its flaws, and there are many, Eternal Hails...... is still kilometers above and beyond bands like Arch Enemy and Watain, who seemingly only exist to rack in sale numbers by selling the same old 'modern metal' aka metalcore recycled garbage to a new generation of clueless metalheads.

Darkthrone's latest release Eternal Hails...... may not be the next Filosofem or the next Sissourlet, but it's an honest effort that deserves to be praised for attempting to bridge the old school of heavy metal with the more recent, and more extreme, underground black metal movement.

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