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The intro to “Fuck Your Values, Fuck Your Beliefs” is a direct throwback to Black Sabbath’s “Black Sabbath,” heavy metal’s big bang moment. Church bells toll over stark tritones, as iron boots trudge underneath. Eventually, the mid-paced slog of mid-period Darkthrone settles in. Most of Malignant (Moribund, 2008) is mid-paced, a refreshing change from black metal’s usual blur. Avsky (Swedish for “disgust”) understand that heavy requires slow, a principle that makes me prefer Darkthrone after their classic records. Blastbeats crop up occasionally, but otherwise this record is built for headbanging – see the huge, curmudgeonly hook that starts “The Filth.” Yes, Malignant is derivative, down to its cover – see Ihsahn’s The Adversary – but why mess with the template when one can perfect it? Darkthrone haven’t sounded this caustic in years.
I really like the sound on this new LP, it’s very cold and morbid yet strong, very good use of reverb…
“but why mess with the template when one can perfect it?”
Because the template requires the vision and guts to defy the safeness of the template for the result to be worthwhile in any but a transient fashion.
Fuck my values, let’s make a record we’ve heard before. Fuck my beliefs, let’s advertise on myspace.
This album is a tattoo, not an artistic statement. It’ll be awkward and difficult to explain in 20 years, if it happens to be embarassingly brought to light too “you see there was this black metal trend going on during that time…”. All like it must perish*. Mediocrity poisons the clarity of this music. Awfulness. IKEA metal. You made a black metal record too, Avsky guy, congratulations. You’ll probably make three more and we will distinguish from between them because number two will be faster, number three will have high production values and the fourth one will be done in your basement for a true return to form.
*I am not advocating killing anyone here, heh, I’d just like it if the critical bar was raised a bit as far as which bands we choose to do positive advertising for. This blog used to be great at that! That this tripe references Black Sabbath is a good thing? That it knows it must keep slow occasionally to make my head bob is enough to get a positive mention? That it is an also-ran something somehow now is an asset? Borrowed aesthetics just get an ‘oh we caught you’ mention? Seriously, that devil angel with the head tilt looks like a skater tattoo, I’m not kidding. We’ve reached the time where you can make generic black metal records with skater tattoo covers and that’s hilariously the most original thing about this!
What’s going on? I don’t expect to always agree with you in matters of taste (and I’ve been following the blog from the beginning, so I know for a fact that most times we won’t agree) but I always respected what you had to say for the bands you chose to feature. This is so overbearingly derivative it borders on self-parody. It is mid-paced, a refreshing change from black metal’s usual blur. No shit. You could be describing so many records here.
Is this some sort of test? Are you waiting for the readers of the blog to notice something? Metalhead fartique? Listener burnout? Something going on? At least the japanese happy thrash thing had some superficial charm!
I’ll end up getting this one I’m sure. Just for that song title alone!