Darkthrone

Darkthrone are the noisy primitivists of Norwegian black metal. While many of their peers drifted into symphonic realms, Darkthrone remained committed to brutal discordance. Founded in 1986 as a death-metal outfit, the group changed course after befriending Mayhem’s Euronymous, whose record store, Helvete (“hell” in Norwegian), served as a hangout for Oslo’s black-metal musicians. They soon adopted the corpse paint and bludgeoning attack that would produce three genre landmarks: 1992’s A Blaze In the Northern Sky, 1993’s Under A Funeral Moon, and 1994’s Transilvanian Hunger, the latter of which was the first to feature Darkthrone whittled down to just Gylve Nagell (a.k.a. Fenriz) and Ted Skjellum (a.k.a. Nocturno Culto). Not only have these recordings inspired black-metal scenes around the globe, but their lo-fi crudeness also influenced other forms of extreme music, like harsh noise. Gradually, Nagell and Skjellum ditched the corpse paint while cracking open their sarcophagus-sealed aesthetic to other styles. Whereas 2006’s The Cult Is Alive pivots toward thrashy crust punk, 2019’s Old Star reveals impenetrable layers of Candlemass-informed doom. Yet the results are always the same: defiantly anti-mainstream cacophony for worshippers of darkness.