DARKTHRONE

It's interesting to imagine what Abbath (IMMORTAL), Nocturno Culto and Fenriz (DARKTHRONE), and Satyr (SATYRICON) would have done circa 1993 if someone had played them their own works from 2004-2007. First and foremost, they would probably have cast the blackest curse upon the scoundrel who gave it to them, then the discs would have been arranged in a circle, a star and an inverted cross laid out inside, the whole lot doused with kerosene and burned under a full moon on the outskirts of Bergen or Oslo. But be that as it may, it is the year 2007, and all the aforementioned gentlemen have long forgotten what black metal is at its core, instead playing a strange mixture of heavy metal, dirty rock'n'roll, and only rarely and irregularly flickering black metal. Journalists today call this nothing other than black'n'roll; the musicians themselves use the term New Wave Of Black Heavy Metal. Of course, this is blatant tongue-in-cheek humor, as are the song commentaries in the booklet with absent lyrics, titles like "Canadian Metal," and the album cover that takes aim at black metal imagery. The title F.O.A.D. stands for Fuck Off And Die, which is also the name of track 5. On tracks 2, 5, 7, and 8, the vocal parts are performed by Fenriz; on the rest, by Nocturno Culto. Fenriz, who in recent years has built a successful career as a DJ, essentially just screams into the microphone, occasionally singing in a rough clean voice. The songs he composed and sings at times bear a painfully strong resemblance in style to MOTORHEAD — this is genuinely heavy rock'n'roll, and at times quite groovy and energetic, seasoned with repeating lead guitar lines in an Eastern mode. The songs featuring Nocturno Culto on vocals differ primarily in vocal approach — it's the same famous grim shriek. What's black metal about this release is exclusively the guitar tuning and certain riffs. In all other respects, if we call "Panzerfaust" and "Transilvanian Hunger" by DARKTHRONE near-benchmarks of true black, then by that very token we cannot speak of this release as a black metal record — the previous disc was likewise oriented toward rock'n'roll. Whether this is good or bad — the answer, in my view, is obvious: the musicians feel their interpretation of black metal has exhausted itself, and they find it more interesting to create something new. The disc is strongly recommended to fans of experimental directions in heavy music and to all black metal devotees who understand that musical style is a product of its time, and nothing else.