9. Sardonic Wrath (2004)

Darkthrone found a new creative energy starting with 2003’s Hate Them, and coming off the recording of that album, that started immediately on its follow-up, 2004’s Sardonic Wrath. (That title is borrowed from a line in the Satanic Bible’s The Book Of Satan: “I blast out the ghastly contents of philosophically whited sepulchers and laugh with sardonic wrath!”)

Sardonic Wrath was recorded in Oslo over six days in April 2003 with engineer Lars Klokkerhaug, who also worked with the band on Hate Them, and surely because of Klokkerhaug’s involvement, as well as the band’s rush to get back to work, Sardonic Wrath feels like something of a continuation of its predecessor. Again the band is dealing in riff-based, crushingly heavy, mostly mid-paced black ‘n’ roll, with Fenriz contributing some complete songs (as well as all lyrics); again the sound balances gnashing rawness with studio sheen. Sardonic Wrath feels a bit darker than Hate Them, but such comparisons are made on a finely calibrated scale, and are extremely relative by any standard.

Darkthrone dedicated Sardonic Wrath to Quorthon of Bathory, who passed away a couple months after Darkthrone completed work on the album, and the death of their primary musical influence almost feels like an apt punctuation here. Sardonic Wrath represents the end of a couple aspects of Darkthrone’s career: It’s their final album with Moonfog (with whom they’d been releasing records since 1995’s Panzerfaust), and their last album that could even loosely be termed “black metal.”

Looking back now, the band’s entire tenure with Moonfog seems like a transitory era. Panzerfaust was the first album on which Darkthrone steered away from the second-generation black metal to which they had given birth; it’s a terrific album, to be sure, but plainly the work of a band in search of a new voice. And after that, the duo seemed somewhat adrift, uncertain (even when the results were strong): from the lackluster black ‘n’ roll of Total Death to the epic atmospheric black metal of Ravishing Grimness and Plaguewielder (from which Fenriz was mostly absent) to the punishingly heavy but decidedly riff- and rhythm-based Hate Them and Sardonic Wrath. Once they returned to Peaceville — with whom they released their first three albums — for 2006’s The Cult Is Alive, they seemed to have found the voice for which they were searching during the Moonfog years. That shouldn’t be read as an indictment of the label, nor of the work Darkthrone produced while on that label — it’s just an odd coincidence of timing.

Bizarrely, Sardonic Wrath was nominated for best metal album of 2004 in Norway’s prestigious Alarm Awards — an honor the band flatly refused. Said Fenriz, “We play real and honest black metal. And we have no interest in being part of the glitter and showbiz side of the music industry.”

That reaction led to Sardonic Wrath being removed from the voter’s ballot, which more or less pleased the band.

“I am not against awards in general,” said Fenriz. “I just thought it was not for us.”

“I have everything AGAINST awards for black metal,” said Nocturno Culto. “What a fucking circus this has become.”