Gaahls Wyrd og Darkthrone på det verdenskjente musikkmagasinets liste over årets beste metal-album.
Det verdenskjente amerikanske musikkmagasinet Rolling Stone har kåret de ti beste metal-albumene i 2019. Blant topp fem av de ti albumene finner vi Darkthrones Old Star og Gaahls Wyrds Gastir — Ghosts Invited, listet som henholdsvis nummer fem og nummer tre.
Rolling Stones-journalist Kory Grow skriver dette om Gaahls Wyrd og albumet Gastir — Ghosts Invited:
There’s so much that the world already knows about Gaahl, the forbidding Norwegian black-metal singer who has fronted Trelldom, Gorgoroth, and God Seed over the years: He’s openly gay, a vegetarian, and a visual artist. But for as revealing as he’s been about his life, he somehow remains one of the most enigmatic figures in metal, keeping his motives a secret. That mystery is what made Gastir — Ghosts Invited, the debut full-length by his latest group, Gaahls Wyrd so bewitching. In between all of the cranium-rattling metal riffing, the album is full of shadowy guitar breaks (check the eerie «Ek Erilar»), whispered lyrics (just try to decipher «From the Spear»), Bowie-esque drama («Ghosts Invited»), and discordant arrangements that might make more sense in an Igor Stravinsky symphony («Through the Past and Past»). It’s music that sounds possessed, and you can’t help but want to let it take you over, too.
Senior musikkredaktør i Rolling Stone, Hank Shteamer, skriver dette om Darkthrone og deres Old Star:
A quarter-century ago, Darkthrone stood near the epicenter of the internecine shit storm and international media circus that was early-Nineties Norwegian black metal. In 2019, the duo are still celebrated as elder statesmen of that scene, but they have little sonic connection to that or any other easily defined movement. Having shapeshifted over the years from a high-tech death-metal outfit to champions of raw, lo-fi monotony and loutish retro nastiness, they’ve gotten to work perfecting an unclassifiable metal strain that feels both crude and elegant, ancient yet highly advanced. On Old Star, continuing in the vein of 2017’s excellent Arctic Thunder, they focus on patiently unfolding mini epics, wringing maximum drama out of lumbering, richly textured riffs and the pained growl of guitarist-vocalist Nocturno Culto. Gloriously crunchy sonics complete the picture of a band fully at ease with being out of step and out of time. «The environment that we recorded Arctic Thunder and Old Star in was this old bomb shelter that we used to rehearse and record some demos in the late Eighties,» Nocturno Culto told New Noise. «The acoustics there are horrible, and it’s like going into war when we are in the studio, but we like that kind of war.»
Les hele saken på magasinet Rolling Stones’ hjemmesider.
