DARKTHRONE – Under a Funeral Moon

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• Bands:
  DARKTHRONE
• Duration: 00:40:43
• Available from: 02/15/1993
• Label:

• Peaceville

Even though it's summer, it's still dark at six in the morning in Bergen. The flames that are devouring Fantoft's stave church stand out against the iron-colored sky. A small group of people observes the infernal scene of the ancient wooden church burning, while the firefighters do everything they can to contain the fire. It is June 6, 1992.
Of the stave church, only the blackened skeleton that stands out on the cover of “Aske”, Burzum's infamous EP about which there would be much to write, will remain standing. But the story we want to tell is not that of Varg Vikernes and the crazy interview he will give shortly, nor that of his relationship with Euronymous – that is, the other thing of which, after the Bergen fire, only the ashes will remain . This is just the background. The scene that interests us begins in the same weeks in a town of six thousand inhabitants about fifteen kilometers from Oslo, in a small recording studio that overlooks a road lined with anonymous reinforced concrete parallelepipeds. It is Kolbotn's Creative Studio, which together with Hellvete constitutes the nerve center of the nascent Norwegian black metal circuit. An underground club that is about to become a national case, but which for the moment is only a handful of twenty-year-olds as politically delirious as they are artistically mature.
In June 1992, three of these twenty-year-olds were recording a record right there, in Kolbotn, the small village where they live. Their names are Leif Nagell, Ted Skjellum and Ivar Enger, but they have renamed themselves Fenriz, Nocturno Culto and Zephyrous respectively. Enger, who plays the guitar, fell out with the other two: he feels left out and maybe he's a little right. Once he finished recording the album, also thanks to a car accident and some problems with alcohol, he decided that he was done with that musical project. Too bad, because the project is called Darkthrone.
Just that year, Darktrhone won some kind of bet with Peaceville, their label. Peaceville had put them under contract to make death metal in the wake of their debut, “Soulside Journey”, instead Darkthrone had presented themselves with a cold and bad second album, produced to a minimum, attributable in all respects to that black current that he was reinventing the legacy of Bathory and Celtic Frost. Peaceville had stalled, had asked to at least make a remix, but Darktrhone had insisted and in the end “A Blaze in the Northern Sky” was released as it was. And it had gone very well, ensuring the trio carte blanche (or black, whatever you prefer) for their next job.
And there they were, therefore, at the Creative Studio recording what would become “Under a Funeral Moon”, the second act of the so-called Unholy Trinity which ends with “Transilvanian Hunger”. It's a crazy album, but it had the somewhat bizarre fate of being released between an extraordinarily innovative work and another which, thirty years later, is still the one you listen to for someone who doesn't know a genre to make them listen to it. understand what it is about. Perhaps also for this reason, at the time of its publication, it lacked the 'instant cvlt' effect of the other two chapters of that unrepeatable trilogy, and perhaps due to a relaxation of the surprise effect generated by “A Blaze…” not it was received with great critical acclaim: too repetitive, too linked to its predecessor, too unlistenable, in short, too black metal. It's sometimes described as a consolidation or transition album, but that's an understatement. If nothing else, it is because according to what Ferniz himself declared in an interview released for Peaceville, it is during the sessions of “Under A Funeral Moon” that Darkthrone Really laid the foundations of a way of making extreme music. This is where they learned to master the diabolical machine they had invented.
In their intentions, “Under a Funeral Moon” had to be a concentrate of pure and raw black metal, amended by the death waste of “A Blaze…” and further emptied in sound. And if only a year later they hadn't released that masterpiece of hostile minimalism that is “Transilvanian Hunger”, perhaps “Under a Funeral Moon” today would be the reference album of that season, with its tormenting riffs set in a songwriting that is still wild and visceral, with his vibe aristocratic and punk at the same time and with that sound as tense and shriveled as the skin on a mummy's face. It's more rotten and more diabolical than “A Blaze…”, but there's still a thin layer of pulp, especially in the bass and drum lines, which will then be stripped away in the skeletal “Transilvanian…”. There is also a post-adolescent taste for storytelling, which is expressed both in the lyrics (with all due respect, whoever defined them as 'poetic' is at least good-natured), and in the cover with Nocturno Culto as Tristo Reaper, which also marks a sort of transition between the low exposure of the previous artwork and the ultra-contrast black and white of the next. But the approach is very powerful precisely because it is spontaneous, without filters and without blunting. AND true in the true sense of the term, that is, it is genuine, credible: the mourning for the death of the beloved witch in the obsessive “Natassja in Eternal Sleep”, the spirits that sway to the notes of “The Dance of Eternal Shadows”, the zoophilic blasphemies evoked in “Unholy Black Metal” are credible.
Musically, “Under A Funeral Moon” is based on a few but very solid ideas: sharp riffs, stained with rock 'n' roll and punk, alternating with doom laments and supported by a pounding but agile rhythm section. Above all, a voice that hovers like a bat's flight, following an invisible route identified more by instinct than with a compass. After the initial agony on the grave of “Natassja”, we are hurried down the “Summer of the Diabolical Holocaust”, in which the guitar howls against the full moon, only to find a moment of funereal peace on the doom opening of “ The Dance of Eternal Shadows”. Just a moment though, because the blast-beats immediately start up again which pave the way for the irresistible guitar playing of “Unholy Black Metal”, winking and very black at the same time. And in this triumph of the imagination of an entire genre, some references to a medieval aesthetic could not be missing, which in fact peeps out in the solemn “To Walk the Infernal Fields”, whose long instrumental digression also leaves room for some hints of experimentation , with ambient sounds or perhaps recreated by blowing and tapping on a microphone. After half the listening time, not only do the quality and tension not drop, but with the wicked title track they perhaps reach their peak thanks to an unforgettable riff, an engaging punk and vaguely thrash tone and some moments of pure freedom creative. From here, we descend into the deepest abyss touched by the platter with “Inn I De Dype Skogens Fabn”, a ride through a blanket as thick as pitch that ends with an unpredictable twist of the tail. The last metres, on “Crossing the Triangle of Flames”, crown a listen that feels like a chase through the nocturnal woods of a decrepit Norway, but pulsating with a young, radical anger, contemptuous of any compromise.
“Under a Funeral Moon” comes out in February. Mayhem's “Live in Leipzig” is released in July. In August, “Det Som Engang Var” by Burzum. That same month, Euronymous was stabbed to death on the stairs of the apartment building where he lived. In November, while the road is being paved between Norway, Sweden, Greece and even Japan for the memorable year to come, Fenriz and Nocturno Culto are already recording new material. We wrote about it here.