It has recently come to my attention that not enough of the metal population truly appreciates Darkthrone's death metal works. Soulside Journey just happens to be my personal #1 in terms of death metal. That album, while to an extent entrenched in the then-emerging Scandinavian/Sunlight DM sound, is in fact anything but typical of that scene. While the embryonic Darkthrone certainly shared a pronounced Autopsy influence with those bands (Entombed, Dismember, Carnage), Soulside Journey took the chromatic, atonal riffing and dirge of albums like Severed Survival to new nadirs, meanwhile adding thereto a sense of technicality that would never again appear on a Darkthrone record. More than anything, Soulside Journey showcases Fenriz's excellent drumming abilities, which he would of course downplay on all albums hereafter, though traces of his fancy footwork showed up on A Blaze in the Northern Sky. What really makes this album work, though, is that it managed to capture the atmosphere of future Darkthrone classics and put it into a death metal framework. Like it or not, and I know that there are those who don't, Soulside Journey, despite being undeniably death metal, bears striking similarities to Under a Funeral Moon but especially to A Blaze in the Northern Sky, if not in delivery than ocassionally in composition and above all in structure. Essentially, Darkthrone composed a death metal album of a style that we have not seen since, nor that we shall ever see again.
Goatlord is almost as impressive, but I'll let somebody else comment thereupon.
Goatlord is almost as impressive, but I'll let somebody else comment thereupon.
