On January 26, 2024, DARKTHRONE returned with their official, 21stalbum to date. It is called “It beckons us all.” I will confess that I was really looking forward to this album , I assume many other fans were as well. However, when the album was released , I realized that I developed mixed feelings regarding “I beckons…” content. As a result, I decided to listen to this album a couple times.

One of my reasons is that DARKTHRONE have been experimenting with their sonic form of art for the last 20 years. Thus, I knew that that time the music was going to be different than it was on their previous albums. Fenriz himself had already mentioned that “It beckons” was going to be doomier. And it actually is. In my view, that was a good idea because I like this genre a lot. However, the more I listened to the album, the less I liked what I was offered.

This album starts off with “Howling Primitive Colonies.” Next song on this album is “Eon 3,” a really good song that reminds me of old good CELTIC FROST blended with SIGH from Japan (the “Scorn Defeat” era). All this combined with Fenriz`s howling stands for a solid dose of interesting, filthy-sounding heavy doom metal. In the past, the band did, quite passionately, explored this style, and, resultingly, incorporated a bunch of classic elements we can find on HELLHAMMER/ BLACK SABBATH or CANDLEMASS albums. So, in theory, it all should be working fine, right? Alas, it is not. I am not convinced. “Black Dawn Affiliation” is very different from previous songs. This cut does indeed disturb the atmosphere of this album, despite the fact there are some pleasant heavy metal riffs present in this song. “And in that moment, I knew the answer” is full of traces of 1970s psychedelic rock. Those, when combined with dirty guitar riffs, sound really menacing.

Unfortunately, when I listen to this song, I am under the impression that this song was very much improvised, that is, the band didn’t have enough ideas how to properly compose and finish it. Sure, this song has its charm with some light keyboard’s parts here and there, but I am not impressed with this track too much. The good thing about this album is that all songs are coherent; and some previous albums lacked this coherency.

Well, of course, this album has some better moments; are these enough to please a picky listener?

I played this album around 20 times to properly estimate its worth objectively and neutrally. Yes, at some point, this album started to “make sense,” so to say, but the overall quality is very uneven. The B side starts off with “The Bird People of Nordland,” an 8-minute-long song, performed in slow and mid-paced tempos. And I will tell you this: the song doesn’t impress me too much, this is not memorable in the least.

Yes, the deeper we get into this album, the more I am sure that Nocturno Culto and Fenriz had totally run out of any new, fresh ideas ... .or maybe they became overwhelmed by the musical convention they were in? Yes, indeed , this genre is quite difficult to keep a listener interested…and there are a number of moments that disturb the flow of this album. Even some faster parts in the second part of the song are not enough to make this track memorable. “The Heavy Hand” is, in my view, this album`s best song. It is quite in the vein of early HELLHAMMER/CELTIC FROST. Yes, had this album had more songs like this one, the album would be much better. But it doesn’t have enough good music for me to get back to this release.

Anyways, this song proves that even a simple, meager song can have a lot of energy in itself. The 10 minute “The Lone Pines of the Lost Planet” is the final cut on this album. A bit more complex structure of this song reminds me of BLACK SABBATH`s atmosphere. Powerful riffs, that’s about it. Well, wrapping up…this should have been released as MLP not a full album. Simple. Like you know, 3-4 songs and that`d be enough.

And I missed the Nocturno Culto vocals too, at least two songs with him would make “It beckons” much more attractive, indeed. Well, this is not utterly bad but could be much better. It is not catchy. Too many boring parts here. It doesn’t help. Oh, one more thing, Zbigniew Bielak did the front cover art for this album. He and DARKTHRONE have cooperated before.

NecronosferatuS