Track 7 Darkthrone cover!!
One of countless many in to come out of the Darkthrone school of the rawer the sound, the better black metal, yet lacking the prolific output of their chief inspiration, Inkisitor has been something of a work in progress. They’ve been touting a small yet fairly impressive set list for the better part of 4 years, most of which makes up the contents of this compilation. But the question before anyone inquiring about this member of the French resistance to all things pleasant sounding is; what is your threshold for rawness?
If the answer to that question is anything less than a 9/10, this is probably going to be a bit too intense for you, and this is coming from someone who put “Under A Funeral Moon” in the 8/10 level for rawness. Picture some pretty nasty sounding death/thrash inspired riffs, muddied up to a level comparable to Gorgoroth’s early demo material, and produced in the most Low-Fi manner possible. A little bit of Immortal here, a little bit of Hellhammer there, and you have something that is perhaps a bit generic stylistically, but very well done when looking at songwriting.
One thing that should be pointed out to make a clear distinction between this band and most other Darkthrone emulators is that there is a bit more of a death metal edge to much of it. Not so much the melodic death tendencies heard in later Immortal and Dimmu Borgir, but more of a subtle early 90s death metal with a fair amount of Bolt Thrower in particular. The vocals also have that quasi-crust punk character common to later Darkthrone at times, particularly on “Blazing Phoenix” and “Antitheos”, which musically definitely have something of an earlier 90s Norwegian black metal character to them.
For the most part, this is fodder for those with the vilest hatred towards accessibility in music, at least from an auditory perspective. It largely resembles rawer extremes of the early 90s Norwegian scene, although the production lacks the overt coldness peculiar to those bands and has more of a disheveled, chaotic character to the arrangement. A good example of this contrast in character is the cover of “Under A Funeral Moon”, which is played exactly note for note, but sounds more like a sonic curse from a humid swamp rather than the woeful elegies of a frozen forest. But full adherence to Norse principles of ambience creation or not, definitely a good pickup for the underground black metal junkie.
Sample: youtube.com/watch?v=siJOtR9WVtc
Sample: youtube.com/watch?v=prX2VOQ81l4
