The Cult Is Alive fucking owns

[Blinded By Blood]

A continuation of Darkthrone's gritty punk-rock-black hybrid. People who weren't fans of Too Old Too Cold won't like it, but those purist bitches can burn in hell :hotjump:

 

[VampyrRose]

Not bad..........but certainly nothing great.

 

[madu]

I really should check it out. Soulside Journey is the only album by them I've heard so far, but if they've actually made a good black metal album it should be worth a listen.

 

[Pull The Plug]

Sorry to break it to ya, but Darkthrone have already made quite a few "good" to say the least black metal albums.

I cant wait to hear this one, I was a big fan of Sardonic Wrath and even though I know its different i'm sure i'll enjoy it.

 

[Wires & Waves]

I really should check it out. Soulside Journey is the only album by them I've heard so far, but if they've actually made a good black metal album it should be worth a listen.

lol

 

[skeptik]

I have Too Old Too Cold, and it's pretty good. According to Erik, The general feel of the full length is less punky, which is a good thing. I'm downloading The Cult Is Alive to verify.

Edit: Okay, after listening to most of the album, it's significantly better than the single. A lot more influence from older Darkthrone I'd say as well, coupled with the punk influences. Well done album overall.

 

[Fredy_Brown]

Huh, I am glad that it´s less punky than Too Old Too Cold, I will donwload and listen to it as soon as possible.
Note: torrent is on torrentspy.

 

[Lyle]

it's a pretty kickass album \m/

 

[KevenZ]

recommended if you like celtic frost, because the album is basically a tribute to them.

 

[CF87]

Every Darkthrone after Soulside Journey has celtic frost riffs. I'm sure everyone knows it will.

 

[Hell Mike]

IT ROCKS and so does the video if you are a false don't entry

 

[Hyperborean Exile]

DarkThrone The Cult is Alive

And here it is, the latest in a decade's worth of irrelevant releases from the "cult" of DarkThrone. I'm sure quite a few metalheads will be shocked by what they find on this disc, and I'm equally sure I will find that reaction baffling. The truth is that The Cult is Alive is merely the culmination of internal trends obvious in DarkThrone's work dating back at least to Panzerfaust.

Many (perhaps most) fans will view The Cult is Alive as a radical departure from DarkThrone's previous work. After all, their career to this point, with all its inspired highs and insipid lows, has taken place entirely within the context of black and death metal. The Cult is Alive, on the other hand, is essentially a straightforward crust/hardcore release with a few isolated genuflections in the direction of black metal (vocals and the occasional melodic turn, as in "De Underjordiske").

A careful listener, however, will notice that the technique used here is not substantially different from that employed on Transilvanian Hunger or the band's other black metal landmarks of the early 1990s (which just goes to show how ephemeral the aesthetic divisions in extreme music really are). The real differences are not so easy to pin down.

The brilliance of DarkThrone's classic works of 1991-1993 lay in the ability of these works to evoke ideas of great complexity through the careful manipulation of deceptively simple music. In this, these works were highly advanced despite being birthed from a spirit of atavistic primitivism. The characteristic expression of this art took the form of basic tremolo picked riffs made gloriously ambiguous through extended phrases and a resolute refusal to allow melodies to resolve in any predictable fashion.

The Cult is Alive retains a significant portion of the technique of DarkThrone's classic works, but the spirit that once guided them is long dead. The feral beauty and ambiguity are gone, and the riffs, while superficially similar, are rendered inert through shortened phrases and a tendency to pander to the dumbest members of the audience by bringing each riff to the expected rhythmic and melodic conclusion, suitably violent to be sure, but, like all product, lifeless in that it substitutes the simulacra of emotions for any overarching idea.

Not surprisingly, The Cult is Alive is long on pretense and contempt for its audience, and perilously short of any meaningful creative impulse. Anyone who already has the classic works of Discharge has pretty much heard every riff on this album (and heard them without the annoying repetition and obnoxious production values). Many metalheads will be crying foul because this is a "punk" album. But the real crime isn't that DarkThrone released a punk album, but that they released the sort of terrible album that has been ubiquitous within the punk scene since the day someone figured out you could sell three chords and irony as if they alone constitute a sufficient reason to be.

8/100

 

[skeptik]

ok

I keep forgetting that only original ideas are worth listening to and that I have to picture a forest while I'm listening to it...

 

[Hyperborean Exile]

When a band goes to considerable effort to use their album as a platform to attack people for ripping them off, don't you think that they should maybe, you know, not use the album to rip off other bands? I don't see that as an inherently unreasonable expectation, do you?

 

[ProjectedBlack]

I DLed it about a week or two ago and I was very pleased with the result. I thought Sardonic Wrath was a decent album but nothing very special. The lyrics on this are the best:

"Shut up...you fucking twat!"

 

[skeptik]

I wasn't aware that Darkthrone took "considerable effort" on The Cult Is Alive to "attack people for ripping them off." The only thing that I can distinguish is from Too Old, Too Cold where it states "You call your metal black/ It's just plastic, lame, and weak." Of course, I don't bother trying to decipher lyrics, and since the only song that has lyrics available thus far is High On Cold War which does not exactly exempify your claim in any explicit way, I'd like to know from where you distinfuish this theme. The only other lyric that I can distinguish is "Nothing to prove/ Just a hellish rock and roll freak," which to me suggests that they don't exactly care what other people are doing and that they will do as they please regardless. Anyway, provided your thesis is correct, it's hypocritical, but has no bearing on the quality of the music.

 

[Hyperborean Exile]

Music is only as good as the ideas behind it. If there aren't any ideas, it can never aspire to anything beyond mediocrity. The myth in metal is that there are "good" riffs or leads or vocals. But this isn't true, the quality of musical expression is a function of the ideas expressed. A riff is only 'good' if it is used to express something, otherwise, it's just some notes strung together to no purpose. Creativity is the first precondition of art.

 

[skeptik]

Music is not solely interpreted based on its creativity and originality, which has been proven countless times by people of reasonable intelligence actually enjoying music derivative of its predecessors. I don't see how the claim that there are "no 'good' riffs or leads or vocals" in light of the obvious fact that these qualities can be isolated and evaluated. The setting in which they are used is a second condition of their value, not their sole value. A particularly poor vocal performance will still be a particularly poor vocal performance regardless of the context. This context does not necessitate complexity or sophistication, let alone particular creativity. Simply because an expression does not meet one's given criteria does not mean that nothing is being expressed and is therefore "just some notes strug together to no purpose." Purpose is interpreted in many forms, both within the context of a song and in a greater meaning beyond the song or album. Obviously with the case in hand, the immediate context is to express a raw, primal, stripped down, laid back and further-developed punkish interpretation of the band's musical repetoire. It is not particularly original. It certainly is derivative. It is not complex by any means. That not not equate nothingness, however. I, however, enjoy such primitive expressions in addition to more profound and artistically relevant expressions. Of course the latter is more intellectually rewarding, but I see nothing wrong with indulging in the former.

 

[Hammer of Might]

What a fucking nerd.

edit: @ H-E

 

[skeptik]

No, we just have different perceptions on the potential and necessary values of music. We can respectfully disagree.