13. The Cult Is Alive (2006)

Darkthrone had begun a transition from second-generation black metal to ’70s- and ’80s-influenced hard rock and thrash on … well, it goes back to ’95’s Panzerfaust, really, and it’s evident on every album after that one, too, with the notable exceptions of ’99’s Ravishing Grimness and 2001’s Plaguewielder. But on 2006’s The Cult Is Alive, the band made what felt like a sudden shift; it seemed as though they were announcing for themselves a new identity. They weren’t, but even with the benefit of hindsight and context, The Cult Is Alive can feel a bit jarring.

In many ways, it is an album of firsts: Notably, it is the first Darkthrone album where Burzum- and Bathory-esque black metal is truly an almost unnoticeable influence — here, the band is openly deriving its inspiration from punk and metal bands like Motörhead and Discharge. It’s also the first album (excluding the unrepresentative Goatlord) where Fenriz contributes a lead vocal (starting with The Cult Is Alive, Fenriz and Nocturno Culto would split vocal duties much more evenly — not always to the band’s benefit). It’s the first album recorded in the band’s portable Necrohell 2 studio, and the sound is rawer than anything since Panzerfaust (the last recorded in their home studio Necrohell). It’s the first album for which Darkthrone made a video (for album highlight “Too Old Too Cold,” which was also the title track of a five-song EP released in 2005). And it’s the first album of the band’s post-Moonfog era.

In retrospect, The Cult Is Alive is a good album, but it falls short of the albums Darkthrone have produced since — which use similar themes and influences to greater ends — as well as the post-Total Death transitional albums that precede it, which forced Culto to grow as a songwriter and guitarist while Fenriz was sidelined due to burnout and depression.

The Cult Is Alive’s virtues are its focus — which the band would later put to better use — its raw power, Culto’s incredible guitar solos, and the mostly comprehensible lyrics, which by this point have frequently become a commentary on the thing Fenriz knows best: the state of heavy metal and Fenriz’s dissatisfaction with such. The album’s most quoted line comes from “Too Old Too Cold,” when Culto snarls, “You call your metal black? It’s just spastic, lame, and weak.”