Darkthrone
A Blaze in the Northern Sky


4.5
superb

Review

by Channing Freeman STAFF
January 18th, 2013 | 1870 replies


Release Date: 1992 | Tracklist

Review Summary: Then is fulfilled Hlin's second sorrow, when Odin goes to fight with the wolf...

There was a time, when my family was still an approximation of a family, when we would drive for miles at night, seeking elevation and seclusion, far from artificial lights, to watch the sky. It only takes one time of really paying attention to the millions of stars and the width of black space to feel a smallness that you never quite escape. But there is also a lightness that comes with it, because you know that the endless expanse of the universe will not swallow you whole, and that even though nothing you could ever do will matter in relation to how tiny you really are, that smallness is shared with everyone else on the planet. Alone on a hilltop, you feel connected.

Black metal, in a way, has always been about communication with nature, both in a literal forest-and-rivers sense, and in that it really digs into the bones of the human experience. A Blaze In The Northern Sky, for how buried it is in mysticism and cultic imagery, is really an album about naturalism. The forces of nature – and this includes things like Chaos and Time – are essentially all that exist because they are endless; can a seventy- or eighty-year human life really be considered existence in the face of eternity? Darkthrone revels in answering that question with a “no.” This album is triumphant, declaring war against phony high-mindedness, decrying the artificial and placing the natural on a pedestal. The frozen production and guttural screams are simply the purest image of how the world really is: perpetually marching toward the lonely end. But, like all good metal albums, there is also a sense of community to the album, a glimpse of the movement that was taking place in the 90s, when metal musicians were taking music back to its roots – not in sound but in ideology, when music was a natural extension of self, when it was an opera of primal energy.

“We are a blaze in the northern sky; the next thousand years are ours.” I remember that first time I looked up at the sky in the country. When I left I was newly meaningless, and I went back home and I waited for the world to fill up with fire or ice or wolves with skyscraper teeth, tearing apart the night and turning us into light again.



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user ratings (1741)
4.3
superb
other reviews of this album
1 of


Comments:Add a Comment 
linguist2011
January 18th 2013


2656 Comments

Album Rating: 5.0

...so yeah, album fucking rules.

linguist2011
January 18th 2013


2656 Comments

Album Rating: 5.0

Great review too.

HSThomas
January 18th 2013


668 Comments


Good review dude though you need cut down on the Shadows-esque melodrama. The first and last paragraphs reads like a pretentious mess of clichés and overused platitudes. Second paragraph is really good though.



pissbore
January 18th 2013


12778 Comments


UNHOLY BLACK ME-TUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHL

Irving
Emeritus
January 18th 2013


7496 Comments


In which Chan attempts to find the meaning of life through a metal album.

Insurrection
January 18th 2013


24845 Comments

Album Rating: 5.0

IN THE SHADOW OF THE HOOOOOOORNS

demigod!
January 19th 2013


49631 Comments

Album Rating: 5.0

WORLD

WITHOUT

ENNNNND



edit: holy shit a chan darkthrone review

Brostep
Emeritus
January 19th 2013


4491 Comments


Great review Chan, love the introduction

oltnabrick
January 19th 2013


40777 Comments

Album Rating: 5.0

darkthrone is so black metal

Crysis
Emeritus
January 19th 2013


17641 Comments

Album Rating: 4.5

space kitteh knows how you feel chan



the cosmos boggle his mind

Observer
Emeritus
January 19th 2013


9471 Comments


http://luxehdwallpaper.com/wallpaper/2012/10/cartoons-stars-fish-catalunya-cats-drawn-1600x1200-hd-wallpaper.jpg

TheFonz123
January 19th 2013


2793 Comments

Album Rating: 4.0

I don't see how this review was pretentious at all, but ok. it writes from a singular point of view rather than as a detached critique which I always like.

Hyperion1001
Emeritus
January 19th 2013


27339 Comments


cool i guess

Aids
January 19th 2013


24556 Comments


omg

Ending
January 19th 2013


2185 Comments


Darkthrone showing Chan the ways of life and its secrets.

On a side note, great great album.

pissbore
January 19th 2013


12778 Comments


NOCTURRRRRRRRRRRRNOOO CULTOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Trebor.
Emeritus
January 19th 2013


60078 Comments


Sweet

Hyperion1001
Emeritus
January 19th 2013


27339 Comments


is that ur gf robert

Trebor.
Emeritus
January 19th 2013


60078 Comments


Nah she dumped me

Hyperion1001
Emeritus
January 19th 2013


27339 Comments


darn shes fine srry bro



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