Darkthrone is probably my favorite metal band in this day and age. I'm a huge fan of all eras of their sound but this new Motorhead, Voivod and Poison Idea worshipping, split songwriting incarnation of the band is just plain killer. I didn't quite know what to expect from Circle the Wagons after I read Fenriz interviews wherein he played up a thrash influence on the new songs. An outsize thrash influence is actually one of the only things I don't overtly hear on this awesomely addictive album as all Fenriz's liner note and interview references to Dio, Mercyful Fate, Metal Church, Trouble, Fates Warning, Necrophagia, Amebix and Adrenalin O.D.start sonically spewing out in these anthemic songs, along with the now standard ingredients of Motorhead and Celtic Frost, coalescing into the flesh and bones of an unstoppable heavy metal Frankenstein.
Circle the Wagons contains epic, varied songs that remind me of why I love metal and why I started this blog in the first place. Beginning with The Cult is Alive the mad geniuses in Darkthrone have seemingly located some sort of sensory time machine that regurgitates and replicates that magical time in the late 80's when I used to take the 61A into Swissvale to the Record Hut to buy Celtic Frost and Destruction tapes. Insanely great songs like "These Treasures Will Never Befall You" uncannily, effortlessly conjure that spirit of wide-eyed amazement I felt the first time "Dethroned Emperor" pillaged my speakers on Franklin Street, while somehow retaining their own unique energy and intensity.
Sitting here gleefully drowning in Oskar Blues Mama's Little Yells Pils night after night straight-up jealous that Fenriz's song "I am the Working Class" is the EXACT pun kroc song I tried and failed to write numerous times. Bravo, dude, with your snotty metallic Post Office punk that would make Henry Chinaski proud.
Upside-down Claws and spilled beer involuntarily happen when "Circle the Wagons" unfurls it's badass clean vocal chorus that makes me wake my neighbors up with belligerently loud, spiritedly out of tune sing-alongs and severe volume nudges during the ripping solo at the end. There is something so strange, yet so indisputably great, about Fenriz's use of clean vocals on "These Treasures..." and "Circle the Wagons."
Then there's Nocturno Culto's songs. The doomy breakdown in "Running for Borders" is like getting pummeled by a bag full of brass knuckles while Nocturno rapturously extolls the virtues of a wisdom that's "ANCIENT in its purest form" over brutal, grinding riffs. "Black Mountain Totem" features a glorious riff that contains echoes of Sabbath's "Tomorrow's Dream." According to Fenriz, the queasy, wobbly vocal approach Nocturno employs on the creeping mid-tempo "Stylized Corpse" is inspired by Killjoy's work on the first Necrophagia album. I think it works just fine.
I have to admit I love how personally so many Black Metal True Believers on message boards and in magazines take Darkthrone's regression and the contemptuous way some of them spit out 'insults' like "PunkThrone" as if that's an epithet of the absolute highest caliber.
I was lucky enough to grow up loving punk in addition to metal so this evolution (or de-evolution) of their sound is fucking A-OK in my book. Blasting your copy of Feel the Darkness almost as frequently as your copy of Killing Technology or Don't Break the Oath can only lead to the alchemical sonic greatness found on albums like Circle the Wagons. I wish more bands would follow suit.
As if I needed another reason to respect Fenriz, the man is a walking encyclopedia of hard rock and metal who is constantly spreading the gospel of the underground in interviews, liner notes, his band of the week blog on Darkthrone's Myspace page and his downloadable mixtapes on Vice.
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