Darkthrone – Pre-Historic Metal

Darkthrone have spent decades in their own orbit, sidestepping the tensions that sometimes trip up long-running metal acts. Fenriz and Nocturno Culto stay home, record in a garage, and keep the outside noise to a minimum. A new record still registers as an event, partly because they rarely disrupt their hermetic rhythm. Pre-Historic Metal, out now and marking their fourth album since 2020, tightens that approach without rewriting it.

The title track makes a small piece of history. Fenriz plays blastbeats on it, something he hasn’t done on record in over twenty years. These aren’t a callback to early black metal, though. They drive a rawer, older strain of metal, the sort that echoes vintage Sodom pushed through a Hellhammer riff filter. The blastbeats work because they land inside a song that’s busier and more direct than nostalgia.

The songwriting itself has shifted. For the first time in a while, the album dispenses with individual writing credits, following the pattern set on 2024’s It Beckons Us All……. Historically, the two members had distinct signatures. Nocturno’s material tended toward the grim and knotty, Fenriz’s toward the anthemic and falsetto-laced. Here the songs feel blended. On ‘Siberian Thaw’ and ‘The Dry Wells Of Hell’, Nocturno’s world-weary weight and Fenriz’s foot-on-the-monitor brashness knit together without losing either identity. The writing comes across more ambitious, full of sharp turns that never sacrifice the rock pulse underneath.

The band’s ear for atmosphere hasn’t dulled. ‘So I Marched To The Sunken Empire’ is an eerie instrumental that conjures a dense, otherworldly mood without a single lyric. It sits comfortably among the riffier tracks, adding depth without breaking the flow.

Pre-Historic Metal doesn’t break from the doomy, swaggering heavy metal path Darkthrone have followed since Arctic Thunder in 2016. It does feel like the most complete version of that sound yet, free of strain and full of the easy assurance that comes when a band has nothing left to prove.