Darkthrone Interview (Fenriz)

Darkthrone's "Pre-Historic Metal" surpasses their previous work and once again opens up possibilities for curiosities within their music. It works much better as a band and helps to keep them fueled for many more years. Perhaps some will start to turn against them, but they forget, since their legion of fans is solid and already accustomed to everything that can happen, and this album does it again, a richer album with more striking patterns and layers.  

Para leer la entrevista en español: Entrevista a Darkthrone 

Metallerium: Welcome Fenriz to Metallerium pages, it’s a great pleasure to speak with you. Let’s start asking how are you? And how is the band during these days for the release of the new album?  

Darkthrone: I almost ran 800 kilometers so far this year (29th of may) so I'm fit as a fiddle but really stressed out now cuz I have to do 3 interviews in 2.5 hours! Both of us are struggling with the interviews these days, if it wasn't for those, we could probably do a couple of albums a year but THAT would be an inflation-mongering move so far into our careers, just exhausting everybody, fans and journos and the vinyl presses haha  

Metallerium: Pre-Historic Metal marks roughly 40 years since your earliest roots as Black Death back in 1986. When you look at this new album, do you see it as a direct celebration of that 40-year timeline, or is it just the next logical "tube of songs" in your life?  

Darkthrone: hm, kinda both since I was re-visiting some of the first demos, I ordered in 86/87 last year and especially the Minotaur demos are still awesome and gets better each year so I decided to even include some fast thrash in the title song (the one I sing in the video). But apart from that we had no planning or discussion almost - as usual - before the album but we talked about wanting 8 songs, meaning more songs more riffs more efficiency. Since we entered chaka khan studios in 2020 the last 3 albums before I knew I could make those songs that I envisioned for Darkthrone in the early stages, 87/88 and those were the long epic ones. Was supposed to be an epic band in the beginning, you see. But on this album, only Siberian Thaw is like that.   

Metallerium: You mentioned that "Prehistoric" is a loose term representing your vibe and a statement of using an old style to create something new. What specific "era" of heavy metal feels truly prehistoric to you? Are we talking early 70s proto-metal, or the raw mid-80s tape-trading underground?  

Darkthrone: Both of those and even 60s stuff and also bands like Accept which we like up until balls to the walls atleast, but we find their albums to be uneven so we only like certain songs, by the way. Amazingly, i like take him in my heart and feel their first album is actually better than their second. But wait, this is MY workplace we are talking about in this interview (Darkthrone) and not accept! HAHA! Yeah it's a loose term, historically from 2000 b.c until 1700s australia but the title just gave me the right feel during the studio sessions and right before when i was listening to sodom obsessed by cruelty STEAMHAMMER LP VERSION (important) and said Minotaur demos, Poison from Germany, Mefisto from sweden, the barbarian track by Maninnya Blade and Deathrow 2 first (germany) and i made a more savage song than usual and ended up scrapping the original album cover AND album title (DEEPLY ROOTED, album cover was of roots and stone).   

Metallerium: The album is described as having a punishing, "in-your-face" guitar presence. Did you change anything about your rehearsal or recording mindset this time around to capture that specific, aggressive guitar energy?  

Darkthrone: Rehearsal? HAHA! We haven't rehearsed for an album since 2003!  

"Hey, what do you think of the holy bible?"  

"I prefer the rehearsal" HAHAHAHA  

Well, Ted finally on the 4th album in chaka khan studios his trusty killer fuzz pedal rack and he also always like really loud guitars (my cymbals could have been costing 1 dollar, no one would notice the difference, gets drowned in prehistoric wall of metal guitars) so there ya go. The songs I made for the 3 previous albums actually needed this specific guitar sound, but hey, what happens happens.

Metallerium: Listeners have noted that you purposefully avoid clean, modern, "crystal-clear" production. In a world dominated by perfectly quantized digital metal, why is it vital for Darkthrone to preserve a "dirty" and unpolished sound?  

Darkthrone: WE KNOW NOTHING ELSE and our first album was also supposed to be recorded organically in Creative Studio in our homeplace but we lacked over 60% of the budget so we ended up with some modern sounding death metal so that was a lesson learned to never do that again. We liked sound that Autopsy had, or DR SHRINKER's fantastic "the eponym" demo. And already back in 84 when I bought Def Leppard pyromania after having seen them on tv show (tv's back then had tiny speakers so everything sounded like demos - it was GREAT) I noticed that I didn't like flashy stadium sound so I have always had a problem with too flashy sound, also in 1988 with the Noise records releases I was struggling as I preferred horst muellers productions in Caet studios etc etc. So prehistoric is our way. So, I got used to necro sound cuz of necro headset, copied tapes...back in early 80s and then all the rehs and demos through tape trading in 87-90 and whatnot. And the more people that do the assembly line metal productions - the more we stand out.  

But we feel we are a 70s band wanting to sound like 86 or something. We don't want bad sound; we want the best sound FOR OUR TASTE. Studios are a lot of coincidences though; you can't steer everything like you have envisioned in your mind. Compromise!  

Metallerium: The physical editions of Pre-Historic Metal—especially the limited boxsets—are marketed with a lot of elite hype. Yet you have always stood for a zero-bullshit, anti-commercial underground mindset. Is there an inherent hypocrisy in selling expensive, premium collector items for music that is meant to sound dirty, cheap, and prehistoric?  

Darkthrone: HAHAHAHA I think you are joking perhaps, but we are paying as much for one studio session doing one album in Chaka Khan than we did for the SEVEN albums before 2020! So, it's nothing cheap about it. And if you ever saw a record contract you would know that most labels of a certain size have standard phrasings that they can sell it to anyone and market and package and re-release as much as they want - it really is their job to do so. Anyway, the box sold out immediately, they had to print another thousand. That might have been the 40th anniversary box though, i can't remember. Anyway, the special edition is the special edition - no one is forced to buy it. The label has made special editions for a while now and we are not going to try to stop their job - it would be like going into your workplace and actively trying to sabotage your flow - no one wants that.   

You should see the box set of black sabbath i bought expensively USED as a child - HAND OF DOOM. ABSOLUTELY no info, just white sleeves, no covers and poor-quality vinyl that one has to play on 11 if your used to volume. I still didn't sell it, though! HAHAHA weird.

Metallerium: With the rise of AI-generated music, anyone can now prompt an algorithm to create a "dirty, 1980s raw black metal track." As a gatekeeper of physical tape-trading and human error, does the fact that your signature "primitive sound" can now be effortlessly faked make you want to change direction entirely?  

Darkthrone: I guess anything can be faked, then. So, let's just lie down and die everybody! Nah, we are a guarantee for REALNESS. Ravishing realness haha! I thought the polished sound was annoying 40 years before the AI started rearing its head in the music biz. They way I see it - I like my old albums, no one can take that music away from me and i am getting older and I really don't need to check out more new stuff (although i do anyway) since I will never have time to listen to all that I have and like ONE MORE TIME in my life AND THAT, my friend, is the REAL depressive existence in my head right there. AI, oh we'll see what the future brings but I have not much future compared to all of you that have to take these things into consideration. I know what I am doing in this life project Darkthrone.  

If we changed style, you'd say next time around that it's easy for AI to copy our new style, hahaha!   

But we're definitely making some changes for the next album, it seems, but it's further into the future than normal and AI is not really a part of our daily lives at all.   

I hope AI can wash my ass gently when I end up in a nursing home HAHAHA  

Metallerium: Darkthrone's album artwork often oscillates between highly detailed fantasy illustrations and DIY, rustic photographs. The main cover art for this record caused quite a stir online for its raw, unfiltered look, while the limited boxset features an alternate piece by Maciej Kamuda. How involved were you in choosing this specific, polarizing aesthetic? 

Darkthrone: EXTREMELY involved as I said before I changed it all last minute. So, the Kamuda piece is because I wanted a cover that was good for t-shirt as we never have that and it was based on one sketch of mine that was loosely inspired by PUKE "back to the stoneage" album cover AND last but not least the best album cover for t-shirt i ever saw: ACERO LETALs "legiones" cover. But it took some time and when it was close to deadline and cover wasn't finished, I just decided to take some photos of how i feel like inside while listening to obsessed by cruelty STEAMHAMMER VERSION LP and if people don't like the way that looks then too bad because it is REALLY how i feel while listening and by the way a DIRT GRIPPER is far more brutal and in the vein of Slaughter strappado album than a friggin candelabre which I wielded on the Transilvanian Hunger cover.  

Metallerium: On tracks like "Eat Eat Eat Your Pride" you lean heavily into nostalgic punk and classic metal tropes. There is a fine line between paying homage to the 80s and just living in the past. Is Darkthrone still pushing the boundaries of extreme music, or have you accepted that you are now a legacy band solely looking backward?  

Darkthrone: I ABSOLUTELY do not lean into punk, it's perhaps the 2 seconds 2 times in the song when I end the riff singing eat eat eat your pride. If I sang, and I suggested this in the studio, THE. DRY. WELL. OF. HELL (same number of syllables) you'd probably think differently but I think the song sounds like this: 

1st riff sound like a mix of sentence of death destruction riff and infernal overkill destruction riff, ends with sudden eat eat eat your pride which yeah gives a punk feel but it's two seconds.   

Then comes a riff I think sounds like Hellhammer  

Then a part that is brand new to us, like some 80s death rock, i dunno  

Then comes the riff where I think it sounds a bit like final parts of pilgrim by Uriah Heep  

Then comes a slow-ish thrash riff which could probably have been on awakening of the gods or take their lives by Kreator   

Then another Hellhammer-sounding riff but faster   

And then back to riff 1  

Metallerium: Your vocal performance on songs like "The Dry Wells of Hell" has been described as a mix of theatrical King Diamond-isms and raw, dramatic wails. How do you tap into that vocal style during recording sessions, and how much of it is improvised in the moment?  

Darkthrone: we solely looked backward since a blaze in the northern sky and under a funeral moon, there was very few contemporary acts that inspired any of that and I also had started regressing on the drums so living in the past is ALWAYS a sentence of honor for us (thank you!) but as much as i have always like bands that just want to sound like a specific style of the past, we can't do that. We rummage around putting together some weird car out of only old car parts - instead of those that are putting together a mint ford mustang or whatnot. So, we feel we make something "new" or "fresh" out of our old ways of thinking and old ways of tastes. Everyone can't be Oranssi pazuzu AND YOU KNOW THAT  

Metallerium: You have famously stated in the past that you practically "un-learned" the drums and only play them a few hours a year when recording. Did you stick strictly to that raw, rehearsed-once philosophy for Pre-Historic Metal, or did any of these tracks demand more intricate coordination?  

Darkthrone: leather and skin and studs, like on the album cover! And going in feeling like that and also SINGING MY OWN LYRICS make me a certified madman while doing vocals in the studio. You better believe it, Bubba! I gotta feel it! Like Dan Beehler on heavy metal maniac album. Anyway, I improvise like an insane person, not even 10% is thought of before as we choose what title/lyric goes with which song as late as when the songs are recorded, usually! But strangely, this is not stressful, it just adds to the intensity of the studio experience!  

Metallerium: You are celebrating 40 years of history since the Black Death days of 1986. Many fans feel that keeping Darkthrone strictly as a studio project and refusing to play live—even for a massive anniversary milestone—is withholding the ultimate experience from the community that supports you. Why does the stage remain a total dead zone for you?  

Darkthrone: No, I probably play more on the soundcheck than for the actual tracks - or same amount of time. Drums isn'm my main thing in darkthrone. I like to try to play what works and only sometimes with a finesse I still haven't un-learned. Too bad people can't hear how HARD I hit on the albums, arrrrrggghh and many feel that one of darkthrone's strengths is NOT playing live. I am eternally grateful that bathory didn't play live. We both hate travelling as well. So, we haven't even travelled to meet up for a 40th celebration.  

And don't get started on reasons not to play live - I couldn't just write a book about it - i could write a book SERIES about it.   

But basically, I'm a kind of "playing alone in his sandbox" type of person. I don't need showbiz or being addicted to any applause.