Heavy Song of the Week: Darkthrone Unite Badass Metal and Cerebral Prog on "They Found One of My Graves"

"Take, for instance, “They Found One of My Graves,” opening track and lead single of their new album Pre-Historic Metal. The first four minutes or so are prime post- The Underground Resistance Darkthrone, taking heavy metal from that primal place in the late '70s and early '80s where doom metal, progressive music, heavy rock and early speed metal hadn't broken apart yet. There are chord choices that modern doom would never make, a kind of heft that heavy rock maintains but much of heavy metal discards, a vocal roughness that sits somewhere between the punk-derived early extreme metal vocals, the barbaric hard rock of the mid-'70s and the manic voice of Arthur Brown from the '60s."

"But then in the final minute, the whole thing bursts open with a lengthy proggy keyboard solo. Darkthrone have never been averse to progressive ideas sprinkled here and there, but this kind of outright prog is a rarity for the group. Yet it doesn't feel out of place here or even beyond their voice. The primordial aspect, the deep love of rock and metal and punk in all of its stripes, is the ultimate unifying factor of their sound. And that deep perpetual love shows."

"There's a beautiful mercurial nature to Darkthrone's music. It's not as easy as saying that they change consistently, because they don't; they often have long stretches of iterating on the same ideas before suddenly shifting tack. But likewise, while there is certainly a strong throughline of heavy metal in all of their music, it isn't as simple as reducing it to that either."

“They Found One of My Graves” opens the album Pre-Historic Metal as a lead single that begins in a primal heavy-metal mode rooted in late-1970s and early-1980s sounds. The first minutes draw on doom, progressive, heavy rock, and early speed metal before those styles separated. Chord choices, vocal roughness, and overall heft evoke heavy rock while retaining heavy-metal intensity. The vocals sit between punk-derived early extreme metal, mid-1970s barbaric hard rock, and the manic theatricality of Arthur Brown. Near the end, the track shifts dramatically into a lengthy proggy keyboard solo, a rarity for the band. The change feels natural because the underlying love of rock, metal, and punk unifies the sound.

Read at Consequence