With the highly revered Norwegians remaining ever-dedicated to the art of the riff after 35 years of existence, Darkthrone return for album number nineteen and a new dose of metallic godliness. On the back of 2019’s triumphant ‘Old Star’ opus, the duo of Nocturno Culto and Fenriz present a 41-minute maelstrom of Epic Black Heavy Metal across five sprawling compositions. Organic and dynamic, the album is an exploration of the very finest vintage metal and the best of doom, all delivered in the unmistakable Darkthrone style, whilst also incorporating instruments such as the Moog to further expand upon these soundscapes.
Eschewing the process of using their own Necrohell II studios – which has served the band so well over the last 15 years – and welcoming a change of environment and the opportunity to experiment with new ideas, ‘Eternal Hails’ was recorded at Chaka Khan Studio in Oslo, and engineered by Ole Ovstedal & Silje Høgevold, breathing new life into the sound while retaining the essence of Darkthrone’s natural, raw feeling.
The cover artwork features the piece “Pluto and Charon” (1972), from renowned science fiction artist David A. Hardy; a hugely inspirational image for both Fenriz & Nocturno Culto spanning several decades, and this also stands as a symbolic link between the genre-bending styles apparent on Darkthrone’s earliest works, to those same traits evident on ‘Eternal Hails’.