Darkthrone spearheaded the second wave of black metal in the early 1990s. But before the corpse paint and candelabras, they played a more technical brand of death metal, as heard on their 1991 debut Soulside Journey.
The band would record another album’s worth of death metal as the intended follow-up. Known as Goatlord, the project was promptly shelved when Fenriz and Nocturno Culto embraced the lo-fi black metal aesthetics found on 1992’s A Blaze in the Northern Sky. Eventually, the Goatlord recordings would see the light of day, with Fenriz adding new vocal overdubs for the album in 1994 prior to its 1996 release on Moonfog Productions.
Darkthrone have now revived Goatlord once more, but in its original instrumental form. Dubbed Goatlord: Original, the album features new artwork by Zbigniew Bielak and is set to drop February 10th via Peaceville.
The recordings for this version were taken from Fenriz’s original tape source, recorded in the band’s rehearsal space in the early ’90s. The tapes were then transferred/mastered by Patrick Engel at Temple of Disharmony.
“The music on Goatlord is basically better than on Soulside Journey,” Fenriz said in a prior interview with Voices from the Darkness. “I did some vocals on that rehearsal tape … in ’94 and then we released it in ’96. Just a few people have that rehearsal tape. We should have released it without the vocals, it would have been better. It should just be a rehearsal tape.”
Pre-order Goatlord: Original on vinyl here. Below you can see the artwork and tracklist.
Goatlord: Original Artwork:
Goatlord: Original Tracklist:
01. Phantasm
02. Hearses
03. Possessed
04. Below
05. Blasphemer
06. Rise
07. Eclipse
08. Wings
09. Wolf
10. A Blaze In The Northern Sky
11. Trident