Best Darkthrone Album

For me, Darkthrone's one of those bands who routinely occupy that "this is the only band I want to listen to, everything else is bullshit" space. Some people think they've been taking the piss for years. Could be! I think Darkthrone's piss-taking beats most bands' seriousness though.

i've only heard the first five. making me no expert. so for me it would be blaze in the northern sky - vs - transilvanian hunger. and transilvanian hunger would win.

transilvanian hunger is THE black metal album for me

Scott you NEED to hear the new one.

As the pollstarter I am keepin' my answer secret 'til the blackened end!

i'm tempted to put down 'goatlord' as it's the first one i heard all those years ago, and subsequently played quite a pivotal part in my black metal journey. but i'm gonna go with 'a blaze in the northern sky' - their first venture into black metal, and still my pick for the best thing they've done.

I've never listened to Darkthrone, but reading the AMG reviews I reckon I'll like this band - do I start at the beginning?

transilvanian hunger cold so cold

First album is Entombed/Therion style death metal. Excellent but unlike anything they did afterwards.

Go with either of the three albums afterwards which are the ones that got them their reputation. A Blaze is a glorious Celtic Frost-meets-Bathory riff-salad, Under A Funeral Moon is the most bleak/morbid/recorded-in-a-crypt sounding one and Transilvanian Hunger is in-your-face relentless minimalist.

I dig a lot of the lo-fi murky sounding black metal bands so I guess I'll go with Under A Funeral Moon first, thanks!

Even though it's probably not their best album, Transilvanian Hunger is the first one I heard, and stuck with me the most. It's the only one I own. I will admit that I haven't heard about half of the albums on the list, though.

This is tough. I've only heard albums 2-5, parts of SJ and parts of Cult is Alive. Of the those early ones, I'm tempted to say Under a Funeral Moon but I actually like Panzerfaust a lot.

Got Transilvanian last year in the Tower meltdown -- love it.

actually i shouldn't say that i've never heard the later stuff. whenever i listen to black metal on lastfm they always play lots of latter-day darkthrone, but i always forget what albums they are from. and i don't think i've heard anything as good as the early stuff.

but i believe that the new stuff is good. i still haven't heard new mayhem either.

>For me, Darkthrone's one of those bands who routinely occupy that "this is the only band I want to listen to, everything else is bullshit" space.

I have a short list of those myself - Slayer, Motörhead, Amon Amarth...if there was a black metal band on that list, it'd be Immortal.

if the immortal vocalist didn't sound so corny, i might like them more.

Blaze and Funeral Moon have some Bathory-ish tracks and they switched to Celtic Frost mode in Panzerfaust, but Transilvanian Hunger is the album where everything sounds like nobody else.

I do not have enough metal cred to have a legit opinion on this, but Northern Sky takes it in my book.

I voted for Blaze, but it could've been Transylvanian.

but I actually like Panzerfaust a lot.

me too, so i voted thusly. first one i heard (after soulside journey), loud, blasting out of shitty car stereo speakers. the vocals are recorded and mixed so it feels like ted culto's sitting in your lap and screaming at you.

(also realized i'm only 4 cds away from a complete darkthrone collection... i should get on that.)

I do not have enough metal cred to have a legit opinion on this, but Northern Sky takes it in my book.

that's imagined baggage Hoos, I don't think metal is as demanding of "cred" (whatever on earth that actually means) as...ahem some other genres maybe are

of course there'll always be some douche who'll decry you as a noob somewhere or whatever but if your gut is telling you that A Blaze in the Northern Sky is the shit, then your gut is substantially non-different from plenty tr00-est of the tr00 dudes you dig?

Panzerfaust

TEN HUNGRY WAVES THEY SWALLOWED MY SHIP
OH, I STEADILY WALKED HOME (AND I ONLY GOT WET ON MY FEET

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

i dig

panzerfaust is so great.

holy crap is panzerfaust really gonna beat transilvanian hunger?

Which is the one with the big radio hit again?

gotta be Emperor's "Curse You All Men," I think that charted in like fifteen countries

darkthrone have actually charted in norway with 'too old, too cold' and 'nwobhm' (and probably with their two respective albums as well).

as for the poll: it's a tough one. 'under a funeral moon' and 'transilvanian hunger' are the ones where they perfected the stripped-down, minimalist black metal which i suppose they've been credited as the originators of. but for me, it's a choice between 'a blaze in the northern sky' and -yes- 'panzerfaust'.

t. hunger

tho john is right about the new one being great

I vote for Transilvanian Hunger for being the fantastic aural torture session it is, but A Blaze probably made the biggest impression on me at the time - of course the talk was all there but A Blaze was the first actually *musical* statement the Norwegians made that could not be denied by anyone. First Nordic album on a "credible" label with proper distribution as well (Peaceville was pretty much *the* underground Metal label at the time). We're talking late 1991 here, Burzum hadn't released a note, Mayhem only had the then four year old crappy Deathcrush demo to show, Thorns was busy filling murky rehearsal tapes, Emperor were still writing material for their demo and Immortal were in their 100%-Bathory-clone phase. For nearly every Metalhead outside Norway, A Blaze was the point they really started paying attention to the Norwegian scene.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Justice is served!

I was out of town this weekend, meant to slip in my vote for Panzerfaust but missed the due date.

FIVE MILLION CHRISTIANS ON A RIDE TOWARDS US
OH, I SLAUGHTERED THE BUNCH WITH ONE SINGLE HIT (WITH MY SPEAR)
FIVE MILLION WOMEN SO ALONE IN THE NIGHT
OH, I HAD THEM ALL SATISFIED PROFUSELY (EVERY NIGHT BY MYSELF)

this is fuckin' great.

varg wrote that shit. double CREDABILITIES.

no votes for Funeral Moon? nobody?

i know, crazy

well you guys didn't vote for it either!

with only 22 voters, that sort of thing happens... i voted for 'panzerfaust', guessing that 'transilvanian' and 'a blaze' would get the most ones.

Siegbran you'd take Funeral Moon over TH?

FIVE MILLION WOMEN SO ALONE IN THE NIGHT
OH, I HAD THEM ALL SATISFIED PROFUSELY (EVERY NIGHT BY MYSELF)

this strains credulity

your n00bs are showing h00s, every longstanding BM listener can satisfy five million women and have energy left for cricket

FIVE MILLION WOMEN SO ALONE IN THE NIGHT
OH, I HAD THEM ALL SATISFIED PROFUSELY (EVERY NIGHT BY MYSELF)

this is like straight out of a blue song.

blueS

darkthrone are the bee's knees

also the cat's pajamas

they might be "the bomb" as well, but don't quote me on that

Siegbran you'd take Funeral Moon over TH?

On many days yes - still voted for TH. But Funeral Moon is their "ugliest" album and I'm just surprised nobody had a preference for that.

Thanks to everyone on this thread - I've since listened to A Blaze In The Northern Sky, Under a Funeral Moon and currently listening to Transylvanian Hunger (which is totally awesome). I liked Under a Funeral Moon better than Blaze but I think TH is even better. This band rules!

do you have to be cool with nazism to be a true metalhead

obviously the answer to your good faith question is yes

hard to think of many other genres where this shit is just normal

it’s something i grapple with way more as a mayhem fan than as a darkthrone fan but go off

i do lament the normalization of buying records by nazis in metal communities

wtf? Darkthrone has literally made a statement that they are are not Nazis, so why wouldn't you go after actually dodgy bands? But I guess that would undermine your argument, since most metalheads avoid those.

fuck off

ahh this is a productive discussion

they collaborated with varg & have an album called panzerfaust but hey at least they said they're not nazis

this kind of denial & defensiveness is absolutely typical though

what exactly is your 'endgame' here. did you read Wikipedia, get mad, and enter this thread?

"hey guys, here are two facts nobody has disputed that are both 20+ years old, here I am to blow your minds with it and suggest you are all Nazis!!!!"

opened thread, saw album title, did 2 minutes of google research, got pissed off at metal culture yet again

i knew this would happen because i know metalheads don't like being called out on this shit

we've literally had the conversation on ILX for more than ten years, you obstinate dumbfuck

you stumble into the thread after learning about it five minutes and we're the assholes? fuck you.

no fuck you for not coming to the obvious necessary consensus on this

i knew this would happen because i know metalheads don't like being called out on this shit

― Left, Saturday, June 26, 2021 10:46 AM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i was defensive bc you were being an asshole from the jump, i wonder why this keeps happening to you

i have been through this before with metal fans so i know how it goes & being polite doesn't work

does this work

also fuck off man, we're not a monolith

Left, have you ever doubted the soundness of your position on… just about anything, really?

yes, this is pretty clear cut though, do you know how this looks to people with no connection to metal culture

Is it now. If I were you, I'd start by reading the countless threads we've collectively devoted to this topic and its various avatars over the years.

Left, I honestly don't care if you get FPed anymore. you're a smart dude, but you're also a cunt, and you presume the worst about everybody and willfully ignore the 15+ years of discussion that have happened on this board ON THE EXACT TOPIC YOU'RE DISCUSSING RIGHT NOW. which, if you'd actually use the search function, would turn up that the discussion has a much wider range of opinion on the topic than you'd be willing to admit. yeah, there are definitely posters here that will literally jedi-handwave the sins of the metal scene away and go "#notallmetalbands", but I don't think Big HOOS, aerosmith, or others in this thread fit that category.

i don't think it's necessary to call left a c***

i was on the verge of calling his rhetorical tactics cop-ish tho

i am aware of the discussions - so what? this thread has been free of them until now

i have only directly insulted the band and metal in general and i haven't called any posters nazis yet

i could and maybe should go after slayer and motorhead too but i hold my tongue, this is egregious though and i decided complaining on another thread wasn't enough

i'd rather be called a cunt than the other thing

Besides, you're British, right?

and german, so

i don't listen to burzum bc that guy is a nazi and i read a lot of persuasive arguments on here back in the day that even listening to nazi shit without giving them your money is some kind of tacit support, i took it to heart, that's still what i live by (even though i think also on some level i respond to regressive shit (just regressive shit that isn't advocating for racist and sexist garbage or whose avatar isn't advocate of racist and sexist garbage, more regressive like a shot-on-video horror is regressive. and i definitely draw my own lines when it comes to this stuff.... as we all do? even with darkthrone, whose most famous record has some nazi shit in the liner notes but who have presented themselves as aggressively not-nazis ever since as far as i have been able to tell)

hard to tell if the british ppl on here are cool with americans calling them cunts, i just assumed it wasn't cool

yeah I didn't mean to be #notallmetalbands, but like Brad said, they've definitely presented since as not-nazis.

cop-ish does work. I think back to the thread DJP started last year, asking why so many black metal threads had been started in a multi-day period, and offering the perspective that it was a particularly ugly look as it happened during the midst of the George Floyd situation, since a few of the threads did discuss some bands with checkered pasts, something that DJP has been brought up in the past and wanted to discuss.

that was my fault, as I was the thread bumper, and it had happened on a night where I depressed and lonely and listening to music and bumped a few thematically connected threads. Is there defensiveness in the metal scene? of fucking course. it exists on this board, and throughout the scene. we saw it in DJP's thread. I'm embarrassed by it and have spent a lot of time fighting it and racism/sexism in the scene in person, even though I've been clowned for it as being an SJW at times in recent years.

DJP got rightfully angry during that thread because the question was essentially for me (as the thread bumper), but many other people jumped in, defensive, not listening to his concerns, being condescending to them, and rushing to preserve the sanctity of metal, while ums and sarahell rightfully asked everybody to dial it back and listen. He gave the board the opportunity to explain themselves, and we failed because we didn't listen and talked over him (I felt bad as I had missed the discussion for several hours).

So to Brad's point, yes, metalheads are not a monolith, and we're not all averse to copping to our own sins or the sins of our genre. we have a lot of pieces of shit amongst us - and not all of us police it properly.

but Left isn't interested in anything but gotcha politics, being able to label and paint with a broad brush, isn't even interested in prior discussions we've had regarding Darkthrone and their early origins, or the makeup of who was a part of these discussions. that's the 'defensiveness' you're seeing here, Left. and I'd hardly consider Brad someone who is a listener with blinders who jedi-handwaves everything away, nor j0hn or Big HOOS or rushomancy (who I miss dearly) - all people who have taken part in discussions in this thread or others.

I am aware of prior discussions. I remember the previous controversy. there is a reason I am pushing this here and not on some metal forum. I know people know this is not ok. this is not some kind of fun game for me, I don’t get off on being a killjoy. I want to like metal. this is why I don’t

this is not some kind of fun game for me, I don’t get off on being a killjoy. I want to like metal

I have never gotten the feeling from any of your posts on any subject in any thread on any ILX page that you "want to like" anything. You're a willfully ignorant shit-stirrer with a messiah complex.

And with that I'm out, because I don't even like Darkthrone.

i really get the idea that you want to like metal but it is too steeped in or tolerant of nazi ideology so like yes i agree that sucks really hard

the closest i come is mayhem who i love so much but recent discussions on what i think was the de mysteriis thread made me rethink about how much time i listen to a band with a dude like hellhammer in it iykwim. this was btw not a hostile discussion at all

yeah that was last year, it was a worthwhile discussion.

I am aware of prior discussions. I remember the previous controversy. there is a reason I am pushing this here and not on some metal forum. I know people know this is not ok. this is not some kind of fun game for me, I don’t get off on being a killjoy. I want to like metal. this is why I don’t

because occasionally people talk about music i like, or recommend music i might like. same reason anyone else is here i assume

*nothing* i have ever posted has been as harsh as the kind of stuff that was standard here 10-15 years ago for what it’s worth (nothing ofc)

Fiww, everything you've raised is clearly worthy of discussion but you've arrived like someone carrying the torch of enlightenment and in my experience this thread is full of thoughtful people that have clearly already spent a good deal of time debating just these issues and deserve more respect.

what would have been a better way to raise this? because other than ignoring it i can’t think of anything that wouldn’t have provoked the same kind of reaction, especially because of but also regardless of whatever reputation i have by now on here

maybe a poster people actually like saying hey people this is a bit dodgy isn’t it could have got somewhere but i didn’t see it happening

Nah, of course it's fine to ask - in lots of ways it seems so clear and obvious. Idk, don't present it as an aggressive fait accompli I guess.

this is not some kind of fun game for me, I don’t get off on being a killjoy.

it'll never be the best Darkthrone album but the new one's pretty good. really liked the past three in point of fact, the ancient doomy vibe really works.

Feel like "The Sea Beneath The Seas..." is meant to sound like Manilla Road (excepting the vocals)

"The Sea Beneath the Seas of the Sea" reminds me of Iron Maiden's "Remember Tomorrow" a lot.

One man's Manilla Road is another man's Iron Maiden through the lowest fi recording imaginable!