Pre-Historic Metal (2026)
Recorded at Chaka Khan Studios, Oslo, Norway. Mastered at Enormous Door and Maor Appelbaum Mastering.
Tracklist: Pre-Historic Metal
- 01. They Found One Of My Graves Play official lyric video 5:15 lyrics
- 02. Pre-Historic Metal Play official lyric video 4:19 lyrics
- 03. Siberian Thaw 6:45 lyrics
- 04. Deeply Rooted 4:58 lyrics
- 05. The Dry Wells Of Hell 6:12 lyrics
- 06. So I Marched To The Sunken Empire 3:21 lyrics
- 07. Eat Eat Eat Your Pride 4:51 lyrics
- 08. Eon 4 5:23 lyrics
Line-up: Pre-Historic Metal
- Ted "Nocturno Culto" Skjellum also in Avrak & Satyricon Vocals, Guitars, Bass
- Gylve "Fenriz" Fenris Nagell also in Coffin Storm & Dødheimsgard Drums, Bass, Guitars, Vocals
Review
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21.06.2026
Forty winters after two restless souls from Kolbotn first set the woods alight, the old wolves do something the second wave rarely dares — on Pre-Historic Metal they walk backward, gladly, into the cave where the fire was first struck. This is less a black metal record than a love letter to everything that fed black metal before it had a name: the iron groan of Celtic Frost, the frostbitten gallop of Bathory, the candle-smoke doom of Sabbath and Candlemass, the gleeful filth of early thrash. Darkthrone are not chasing the future here. They are guarding a hearth.
And what riffs guard it. The record is built of them — slab after slab of memorable, primitive, gloriously unfashionable steel, played with the loose confidence of men with nothing left to prove. They Found One of My Graves lurches in on psychedelic doom; the title track weds punk swagger to a crawling undertow; Siberian Thaw stacks its riffs into something hypnotic and almost stately. Best of all is Fenriz, whose cracked, sincere King Diamond falsettos should not work and absolutely do — because he means every ridiculous, magnificent note. The grime-caked home-studio sound is no flaw but a creed: this music should sound unearthed, not recorded.
The Saga must be honest, though. Those who want Darkthrone to evolve will find none of it — the same two craftsmen, the same beloved rite — and the deliberate murk can blur one mid-album riff into the next. The instrumental So I Marched to the Sunken Empire carries real regal weight, then vanishes almost before it begins, a banner raised and lowered too soon. There is more comfort here than danger.
But comfort this hard-won, and this joyful, is its own triumph. Reverent without being a museum piece, ageing without softening — among the very finest of their late era. Raise a horn.
▶ Lyric video: [Pre-Historic Metal]
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