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Darkthrone: Hate them

06/01/12 || BamaHammer

Growing up, I never got into black metal. I always found the let’s-play-dress-up antics to be wrought with silliness and melodrama, and the music itself was just not that interesting to me, mainly because productions always sucked (by design, of course). Obviously, with the advent of that new thingamajig called the Internets, I managed to discover some halfway decent black metal roughly a decade ago, and I actually enjoy quite a few bands’ output from the genre nowadays (Gehenna, Craft, Dark Funeral, etc.).

Darkthrone’s “Hate them” was actually the first semi-raw black metal album I grew to like, and in the end, it’s not even as “black metal” as the band’s more well-known releases from the mid-90s. Nevertheless, I really dig this album’s sound, attitude, and, above all else, atmosphere. The opening track, “Rust,” has one of the best atmospheric build-ups you’ll find in any genre. At the beginning, the dark synthetic opening by Lars Sørensen, formerly of Red Harvest, gives way to a simple yet effective guitar riff that is just classic Darkthrone, and from that point forward, you’re just mentally sucked into the album completely.

Every song contains all the conventional elements of archetypal Darkthrone, but with this album, the band began to evolve. The customary Fenriz blastbeats that defined their classic sound on their first few black metal albums had become peppered between slower, doom-ier passages, and the tremolo picking of “Transylvanian Hunger” had suddenly been joined by heavy downstroke rhythms that straddled the line between black metal and punk that the band walks so finely today.

The production is decidedly good, considering it is a black metal album after all. Despite the fact that the EQ is flatter than an EKG machine hooked up to Metallica’s career (zing!), the mix is well-done with good levels all around. Culto’s vocals are clear and loud but not too loud, à la “Panzerfaust,” and the drums are sharp with a surprisingly good tone. The bass is absolutely fantastic for a black metal mix. For the slower, more plodding passages like the beginning of “Rust” or the end of “Fucked up and ready to die,” it stomps along loud and proud. When things speed up, it begins to disappear a bit behind the blasting, but as the music moves, you can hear the support it gives the riffs. In all, I wouldn’t hesitate to say “Hate them” has the best “raw” black metal production I’ve heard, assuming they were putting some effort into making a good-sounding album for once.

Overall, “Hate them” is a fairly enjoyable experience from start to finish if you’re into black metal. If you’re not, this album probably won’t do anything to change your mind about the genre, but it might given the cool production and catchy songs. It’s got all the attitude, atmosphere, and misanthropy one would expect from black metal, but what it adds to the mix is groove, and that’s much appreciated. Now excuse me while I put on my corpse paint and spiked suspenders and frolic around the woods with a mace.

I come from a land
Of systematic erasure of optimism and positiveness.

7,5

Information
Released: 2003
Label: Moonfog
Website: www.darkthrone.no
Band
Nocturno Culto: guitars, bass, vocals
Fenriz: drums

Tracklist
01. Rust
02. Det Svartner Nå
03. Fucked Up and Ready to Die
04. Ytterst I Livet
05. Divided We Stand
06. Striving for a Piece of Lucifer
07. In Honour of Thy Name

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