Darkthrone - The Underground Resistance (2013)

I have long had a sort of love/hate thing with Darkthrone. Back in '91, when I first heard 'Soulside Journey', I thought that it was a landmark in the then emerging doom/death genre not to mention that it's one of my all time favorite albums to this day. I was beyond mortified when I first listened to their follow up, A Blaze in the Northern Sky. Having never been a big fan of the wimpy and tinny guitar sound that is favored by black metal musicians, I was aghast. What the fuck happened to these guys? I had held out a semblance of hope that the band would come to their senses and release yet another monolith of quality death metal such as 'Soulside', but every album they released was more pussified than the last. I could not believe it. It would be years, hell, even decades until I would come around (grudgingly) to the style(s) of metal that they had chose to abandon their death metal beginnings for.

Looking back in hindsight, I can say that, for the most part, I do enjoy Darkthrone's back catalog, though for  the life of me I'll never understand the mass appeal of their apparent "magnum opus", 'Transylvanian Hunger'. Sure, I get the fascination with droney/minimalism (I mean, doom is my number one style of music, for fucks sake!), but TH is just outright fucking annoying. I don't care what the 'necro' police tell ya, there aint nothing provocative about chilling on the same rusty chord for several minutes before moving on to the next. That's child's play. A midget with Down's Syndrome can come up with something more "far out" than that.

Anyways... here we have the band in their latest incarnation and for the most part it sounds just fine. I know that there are a lot of "true/kvult/necro" fucks out there with their panties all bunched up inside their twats due to the lack of "orthodox" (seriously, who the fuck comes up with this shit?) black metal vocals and all I have to say is, how does it feel to have your desires and expectations cast to the wind?

I can't help but feel as if many of the riffs on this album were written by someone who has a no more than a remedial understanding of how to write a song. If it weren't for the mastery shown on 'Soulside' so many moons ago, I would be inclined to believe that Darkthrone is nothing more than a duo of hacks that have been pulling the wool over their audiences eyes for the past 20 or so years by purposely releasing albums of a shit quality. I don't know. Apparently I'm the only one who wonders about this shit for there's been no shortage of drooling and fanatic Darkthrone dorks who eagerly lap up every ounce of diarrheal splat the band has to offer.

Nonetheless, aside from the lack of 'whiny bitch black metal vocals' (you know, the "orthodox" kind) the only real offense here is the abominable 'Valkyrie' which showcases an agonizing onslaught of Fenriz' absolutely horrendous falsettos and high end wailing. Please, somebody shoot this guy and pass the title of "I'm so necro it hurts" to the next retard in line.