We’re in the sixth year of this decade, and Darkthrone are already releasing their fourth LP of the 2020s. Their output is admirable, but are there any surprises in store for album number twenty-two?
Ever the students of heavy metal history, the opening riff of ‘They Found One of My Graves’ suggests Darkthrone want to locate their music in Metallica’s Ride the Lightning era of 1984. A sharp alt-picked thrust to the main rhythm is perfect fodder for them to pay their usual homage to Tom G. Warrior with a garbled vocal delivery. The biggest surprise is how enjoyable it is. See if you can stay inactive while Nocturno Culto and Fenriz blast away from their bunker like gods of metal’s golden era of the mid-1980s. Introducing a Moog into this setting would be radical if this wasn’t Darkthrone. After all, they do what they want while enforcing boundaries of taste on others.
A notable feature of the last nine Darkthrone albums is their nostalgia for when metal was exciting and transgressive. The title-track is not as primitive as you expect, unless you discard Morbid Tales by Celtic Frost as primitive. And who would do that knowing that Hellhammer came before it? The velocity of the plectrum picking is impressive for a band that once made a point of staying away from this technique for fear that it might sound too polished. Of course, they incorporate doom metal into this history lesson as well. ‘Siberian Thaw’ is a solid effort that’s indebted to, yep, you guessed it… Celtic Frost. That’s until they halt the song at 03:34 and relaunch it as an ambient swell of ethereal reverb shapes. Observe how it finds a crazed berserker energy at the end before ending in a haze of Black Sabbath rituals.
But we can’t give Darkthrone a high score for every album that reminds us of the glory days of Bathory, Voivoid, and Slayer circa 1985. Pre-Historic Metal is not a broken record, but its imprints of wear and tear cannot be ignored. ‘The Dry Wells of Hell’ gives the vintage era of Mercyful Hate a run for their money. It’s good, but Hooded Menace do this sound better. Fortunately, the mixture of malicious power chord movements and mid-range dyad intervals give flamboyance to Darkthrone’s morbid atmosphere (see ‘Deeply Rooted’), and the vocals are always lively enough to support the galloping moments.
Just when you think you’ve heard enough, they throw in the melancholy despair of ‘I Marched to the Sunken Empire’ at track six (a rare instrumental) and take us back to the early 1980s post-punk era of funereal keyboards and maudlin guitars. They do something similar in ‘Eat Eat Eat Your Pride’ when you assume it’ll be another homage to the first wave of European thrash metal that suffered from such awful technical limitations in the mid-1980s.
Pre-Historic Metal has no mysteries to uncover, nor does it dwell in ambiguities. Can fans of the early 1990s era enjoy Darkthrone? Yes, the icy black metal of old is still here in glimpses. Listen to the shivering tremolo patterns of closing track, ‘Eon 4’, as they map out their journey in a doom metal tempo that tries in vain to get into a higher gear and succeeds after trialling multiple transitions. It reminds us that Darkthrone always have something up their sleeves. But how much longer can we praise them for their history lessons?
Kirk Houghton
Verdict
Release Date: 08/05/2026
Record Label: Peaceville Records
Standout tracks: They Found One of My Graves; Siberian Thaw; I Marched to the Sunken Empire
Suggested Further Listening: Hooded Menace – The Tritonus Bell (2021), Yatra – Born into Chaos (2023), Sodom – The Arsonist (2025)