Darkthrone Soulside Journey

Darkthrone 'Soulside Journey' (Peaceville, 1991)

Before they daubed on the corpsepaint, clutched oranges, hung about in forests and released some of the worst/best sounding records in Black Metal history, Hank Amarillo (Fenriz - turns out 'Hank' wasn't Gylve's real name either!) Ted Skjellum (Nocturno Culto), Ivar Enger (Zephyrous) and Dag Nilsen (never adopted a silly name and left the band soon after recording 'A Blaze in Northern Sky') unleashed 'Soulside Journey'.

Produced by the legendary Tomas Skogsberg, I assume that 'Soulside Journey' was recorded at Sunlight Studios, but no mention of this is made, although clearly, from the thanks list and the fact the guitars are co-produced by Uffe of Entombed fame, Darkthrone thought of themselves are part of the huge Death metal scene that was sweeping Scandinavia in the late 80s/early 90s.

Ever the contrary ones, after the release of 'Soulside Journey', Darkthrone turned on the 'Life' metal scene and fully immersed themselves in the Norwegian Black Metal inner circle which comprised of all the other little fannies discussed at length previously.
They didn't change their name though so they were happy enough to trade on the reputation they had developed in the Life metal scene thanks to their vastly superior Swedish buddies. Likewise they still survive entirely on past glories releasing one mediocre, self-indulgent album after another whilst pontificating and posing in trite bar/hill walking scenarios and telling 'the kids' what music they should or shouldn't like.

Maybe instead of kissing their revisionist grumpy old men of metal behinds journalists should ask them why they thought right wing, anti-Semitic comments and beliefs were acceptable during the 1990s. Perhaps they should also ask why they thought it appropriate to have lyrics written by Mr. Vikernes, but to be honest nobody in the metal press has the balls to do such things and Darkthrone just ignore the questions anyway and carry on their 'zany' way. A recent interview I read went something along these lines, 'Hey kids, we now 'sing' on our songs and we like techno but we're worried about the immigration policy the Norwegian Government have and we can almost see why Brev......err no let's get back to how cool the latest 20th generation facsimile of Celtic Frost is that I have discovered and now you must all fawn over.'

'Soulside Journey' is reasonably interesting, it sounds almost like a demo, but has a great guitar tone and a crisp drum sound. You can definitely hear that the band have a few progressive ideas that make them sound a little stranger than the more standard Sunlight sound. The lyrics are also very poetic and almost dream like in their flow rather than your standard slash and dice Swedish death metal fare.

I picked this up in Avalanche when some poor soul had given up a very good selection of their collection. On the same day I got the picture disc of Celtic Frost's 'Emperor's Return' and foolishly decided to not buy the picture disc of Kreator's 'After the Attack'. I taped 'Soulside Journey' to listen to in the car up to Aberdeen with my black metal chums Apollyon and we were all a bit non plussed that it wasn't horrendously under produced buzz sawing. I liked it and bought a 'As wolfs (sic) among sheep we have wandered' t shirt in One Up (Aberdeen's superior answer to Avalanche). Said shirt was promptly dispatched to Murphy when I learnt more about the inane spoutings of the Norwegian dim wits.

Or are Darkthrone just the Scandinavian equivalent of Type O Negative; doing anything and everything to wind people up whilst having their tongue firmly in cheek? I think that may be the case and I'd have to admit that I probably share 75% of my musical tastes with them, Fenriz even has a Plastikman tattoo, but I still can't let the nagging doubt that they enjoy their notoriety and tastemaker status a little too much.

You'll note the Jack Chick comics used a prop; 'This Was your Life!' was the first one I ever saw and the page where the angel takes the recently dead white guy ('I simply refuse to believe this is happening to me!) to be judged, was used on the flyer for my first ever gig with Unique Freak at the Tap. The second comic, or tract as they are referred to, 'It's Your Life!' is exactly the same story but revamped for the 21st century so that all the characters are black; here our protagonist is more to the point, 'I can't believe this is happening to me!'

Jack Chick and Darkthrone; both willing to do anything to suck as many as possible into their vortex of falsehood. That's almost like a Fenriz lyric!

Peace