Review by Rexorcist for Satyricon - The Shadowthrone (1994)

What I greatly appreciated about the Satyricon debut was the boldness and the exploration of Norwegian influences in black metal.  There was a lot going on that added a good deal of personality to the album without ever feeling like too much.  This second album, however, trades some of that inventiveness for a more straightforward black metal sound and improved production.  This is not to say that it's a bad album, just that a more straightforward direction isn't the kind of direction I would want to take after only one album.  Inferior, but still worth checking out.

Now the structures here are very good.  There's a lot of clever riffage and some good progressiveness that drives the whole album, even when the songs last ten minutes.  It never gets tiring no matter how long any song gets, already helping it to stand out from a bunch of other early black releases that were mostly worried about the sound, the heaviness and saying something rude against Christians.  On that latter note, the lyrical poetry remains full of imagery and class.  While the typical themes such as anti-religion and Norse wartime are present, they're certainly more full of life than the standard black metal band of the early days.  And there's none of that obnoxious gore and vulgarity that Bathory was so proud of when he wrote The Golden Walls of Heaven.  I also feel that Satyr, the lead vocalist, improved his range a little on some of these songs, allowing his unique (at the time) voice to go even farther when the back's style took a step backwards.  There's more professionalism in his voice this time around.  Of course, it finally produces a dungeon synth song at the end, but that doesn't really say "variety" as much as it says "slow and mysterious ending."

This second Satyricon piece was a fun album with a lot of creativity invested in the melodies, but there was an identity shift here that I didn't care for.  Still, considering how much effort they put into the melodies and lyrics, I would still say this manages to be a great album.

90