Darkthrone Album: “Soulside Journey [Digipak]”

A totally awesome start for the most evil of black metal bands. This was Darkthrone's debut album, while they were still playing death metal. Better than many modern death metal releases, the riffing and drumming are both tight and together. Nocturno Culto's vocals are much different than on future releases. It may not be black, but its as hateful as one would expect from darkthrone.

Quite frankly I think that this album stands as a pinnacle of creative songwriting among the early Scandinavian death and black metal bands, which is saying alot. There is so much going on in each song but you could never call it confusing, the tunes just grow organically as if you can see the band hashing em out at an all night jam session righ before your eyes. Darkthrone were all about making supremely atmospheric music that is above all memorable and full of character. I will say that Soulside Journey, Goatlord, to some extent BITNS are a bit of a clusterf*%k compositionally but that is part of their considerable charm. Soulside Journey is a classick of complex death metal.

Darkthrone started out as a DEATH METAL band!! and it sucks they didnt stay one.. for at least another album!!

And of course this album has BLACK METAL elements to it as well!! but Fenriz just BLASTED the living HELL out of the drums..I dare say he was the single best DEATH METAL drumer ever(next to Dario from INFESTER that is!)

Each song on here is so different form one another and from any other band that ever exsisted!!

The BASS is there all the time!! and dose its own thing as well!!! ALL HAIL DAG!!!!!!

And the SOLOS are the most breath taking of any band..the only thing is they arent there very often!!!

One of my fave songs is ''GRAVE WITH A VIEW'' those lyrics are some of the most KILLER.. EVER!!!!!!

All in all this is one of those CLASICK albums that if you dont own by now..I FELL PITY FOR YOU!!PITY!!!

SOULSIDE JOURNEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1990!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just don't see why this album isn't liked all that much. I think it's one of the better Death Metal albums ever released. This was also my first Death Metal album.

The level of musicianship on this album is amazing, especially compared to Darkthrone's later releases, which were very primitive and minimalistic in songwriting (not a bad thing; I also love their later stuff as well). This album shows a lot of promise, and I've been wondering for awhile how Darkthrone would be today if they'd stayed in the Death Metal path. This reminds me of some other bands, like Entombed or Slipknot for example, who played Death Metal in the beginning (check Entombed's Left Hand Path and Clandestine, and Slipknot's Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat.), but have changed their style around a bit (Entombed adding Rock influences, Slipknot becoming Nu Metal).

Every song here is great, but if I had to pick a favorite, it'd probably be Sempiternal Sepulchrality. Other good songs include every song here. In fact, I'm FAR from being a big fan of instrumentals (on Metallica's first four albums, the only instrumental I can enjoy is Anesthesia - Pulling Teeth from Kill 'Em All), but the two instrumentals present here (Track 4, Accumulation of Generalization, and track 11, Eon) are great songs, which aren't pretentious and dragged-out, and they actually enhance the mood of the album as a whole.

Every song here except for the instrumental tracks has at least one guitar solo. Nocturno Culto's solos are some of the best I've ever heard. I honestly can't tell who's singing on this album though. No one in the lineup is listed as a singer, but Fenriz is listed as lyricist. In the interviews on this digipak version, from what I remember, neither Fenriz nor Nocturno Culto say who sings on this album. Although I have a feeling it's Fenriz, because I know he sings on Darkthrone's early demoes, yet the vocals here sound different. Oh well.

Overall, like the title of this review says, this is a true Death Metal classic. Few other Death Metal albums I've heard measure up to this (one album that is just as good, if not better, is Nile's Amongst The Catacombs Of Nephren-Ka). The music is very technical, yet very atmospheric (the keyboards in certain parts remind me of a combo of Morbid Angel's Altars of Madness and Nocturnus' Ethereal Tomb), and envokes unique moods just like Under A Funeral Moon or Transilvanian Hunger. If you find this in a store near you, or on Ebay or whatever, I highly reccomend this album.

The first time I heard Darkthrone's debut album I felt I was "soaring through damp air", over old crypts and dolmen-studded hillsides. There was something mystical at work that distinguished it from the vast majority of death metal at the time. In the days when 'black metal' referred to lyrical content rather than a musical 'sound', Darkthrone were one of the few death metal bands with a spiritual imprint to their music. Even the song titles were mysterious and evocative: 'Sunrise Over Locus Mortis', 'Iconoclasm Sweeps Cappadocia', 'The Watchtower'. If more death metal had been of this caliber, then it might not have stagnated into the robotic technical phenomenon it later became.

Not that there is any shortage of technical skill to be found on 'Soulside Journey', where Fenriz's drumming in particular changes pattern nearly every second bar. But technicality in itself means nothing without atmosphere or emotional intensity, and the atmospheres of 'Soulside Journey' are still enticing today. Haunting, impressionist lyrics and cold, autumnal guitar elevates this far above the herd of 90s death metal, and points the way to the revolutionary black metal of their next album 'A Blaze in the Northern Sky'.