Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Darkthrone - Astral Fortress (2022)

Following my review of Old Star I soon found myself pressing on into the Darkthrone "latter day" discography.  Having found very little wrong with the 2019 release I found my focus switched to the latest new release (at the time of writing) from the legendary Norwegians.  I am aware that Eternal Hails is sandwiched in between the two releases I have now written a review for, and I have heard that through a few times also.  However, it is yet to make as an immediate impact as Astral Fortress did after just a couple of spins.  Once again the paired-back, non-black metal style of metal that embraces doom and heavy metal wins the day.

With the increasing sense that the number of fucks Fenriz and Nocturno Culto have left to give reduces with every passing year, Astral Fortress is a structure built with an almost nonchalant level of attention.  The walls are not necessarily flush against one another and the floor is almost certainly not level either, but it is just still so fucking homely to listen to the record that you do not care if the roof has a couple of holes in it where polished production values and a high quality of technical capability got kicked out of the building.  The guys are not trying to impress anybody necessarily, yet they organically manage to make an album that presses a sense of nostalgia on the listener without becoming oppressive as a "retro" record.

Those soothing synths on Stalagmite Necklace are trance-inducing, such is their level of dreamy and hazy magic.  Who fucking cares if NC's vocals are cumbersome when there's a Mellotron to keep you company along the way?  Fenriz's drumming is consistent throughout without ever straying anywhere near the realm of technical or overtly showy.  There is a power in simplicity and this has never been better exemplified than the performance of the man on the stool behind the skins.  Above all else though, it is the mournful and melancholic wail of the guitars on tracks such as The Sea Beneath the Seas of the Sea (great track title) that steal the dank limelight on Astral Fortress.  Indeed, for a perfect example of "no frills" metal, we need look no further than Darkthrone's twentieth full length release.

By now a thousand football fields away from their black metal days, Darkthrone have almost undertaken a complete reinvention of themselves in terms of their sound and style.  However, the true success of their modern day output that I have heard to date is that it does still retain that sense of irreverence for their art form that only black metal can ever truly teach.  Whilst it may be so far away stylistically from black metal, the cult is very much still alive.