Review Summary: Resistance is futile.
The mid-era Darkthrone period is mostly a forgettable one.
Panzerfaust was the last of the band’s typical black metal albums before they began their slow transformation into a black metal influenced crust punk band. Surprisingly, 1999’s
Ravishing Grimness holds quite well on it’s own, sounding less like a transition album and more like an attempt at capturing what made them special in the first place. In Darkthrone’s case, it was honesty. They knew they weren’t the same evil guys that put out the ice cold
Transylvanian Hunger and they realized that trying to put out the same album multiple times never works.
Ravishing Grimness shows an experimental side of Darkthrone; still trying to be being honest to their black metal roots while branching out into a fun sound that would define themselves in later albums.
“The Claws of Time” is definitely the highlight of the album though, starting with an optimistic sounding riff before closing with one of the best outros of their career. The title track is another track pick, having riffs that could've been B-sides off an early Burzum album. Still even the weaker songs have some redeemable qualities. “Across the Vacuum,” for one, starts off with one of Darkthrone’s most uninspired, disjointed riffs made worse by half-assed blast beating by Fenriz, but picks up some momentum half way through the song when atmosphere takes over instead of the riffs - much like the rest of the good moments on the album.
In fact, that’s one of the few things
Ravishing Grimness has going for it: atmosphere. The production on this album is easily the best out of their mid-era albums; the guitars have a bleakness to them that was lacking on
Hate Them and
Plaguewielder, and the production isn’t as outright terrible as it was on
Total Death and
Sardonic Wrath, and this atmosphere actually makes some of the bad riffs on the album, well, not that bad. The beginning of “The Claws of Time” would sound downright cheesy with
Plaguewielder’s dry production but the fullness of the guitars here make it sound almost hopeful, something pretty rare in the genre. The atmosphere also helps “To the Death (Under the King),” the fastest song on the album, sound like an actual black metal song as opposed to a bland proto-thrash metal band’s attempt at black metal.
Despite all its positives,
Ravishing Grimness simply feels like a lazy effort. It was the inevitable start of the band running out of steam, only to be confirmed by their next release. But aside from the fairly uninspired song writing and cliché lyircs,
Ravishing Grimness has enough redeemable qualities to make it a worthy spin to any Darkthrone or metal fan in general.
