DARKTHRONE has released a first single from their upcoming album Eternal Hails……, which comes out June 25 via Peaceville. Listen to “Hate Cloak” below.
“Hate Cloak” is a nine-minute, 17-second Fenriz-penned hallowed epic which is steeped in the majestic thunder of vintage heavy doom metal.
Fenriz comments: “‘Hate Cloak’ is certainly the slowest song on the album. There are plenty of ‘fast’ parts on Ted‘s songs, middle tempos and slow as well. The whole point of us having long songs is variation in tempos/pace, hence the epicness.”
Since forming in 1986 as BLACK DEATH in Kolboton, Norway, DARKTHRONE have been masters of their art. Dropping the death metal of 1991’s Soulside Journey debut album in favor of a more primitive, black metal sound on the following year’s A Blaze In The Northern Sky, they helped define black metal in the ’90s through albums like 1993’s Under A Funeral Moon and its follow-up Transilvanian Hunger. Truly, though, DARKTHRONE remain unique, even in their own canon.
On Eternal Hails……, the longer, doomier songs reflect drummer Fenriz‘s love of doom, taking their time to make their point. For Fenriz, what he and co-conspirator Nocturno Culto have concocted stretches back even further than discovering black metal, to the sounds of the ’70s and the more freewheeling sounds of bands playing with more expansive themes. This didn’t just make the songs longer, it made them an entirely different beast from the ground up.
“When I was a kid growing up with metal I kept looking for bands with long songs. BLACK SABBATH had many, and CELTIC FROST‘s ‘Dawn Of Meggido’ had a long song, so I put that on in the record store and discovered another dimension of metal. CANDLEMASS‘s Epicus Doomicus Metallicus had only long songs, so I think I bought that without even listening, and it was one of my best buys ever — an eternal inspiration for my entire career.”
“For us, it has become a bit logical, hard to explain, but you get to build up for a different kind of listening,” says Nocturno Culto. “A three-minute song is nothing we think of at the moment. We like it this way. For now.”
Eternal Hails…… track listing:
01. His Master’s Voice [07:17]
02. Hate Cloak [09:16]
03. Wake Of The Awakened [08:24]
04. Voyage To A North Pole Adrift [09:24]
05. Lost Arcane City Of Uppakra [07:02]
