Darkthrone: Under a Funeral Moon (clear vinyl) [PEACEVILLE]

Why you'll love it

This limited Peaceville edition presses the album on clear vinyl. It's the second of the band's Unholy Trinity, between A Blaze in the Northern Sky and Transilvanian Hunger, and the record where they set out to make a pure black metal album.

This edition

• Clear vinyl
• Limited edition

About the album

Some bands polish their sound as they go. Darkthrone went the other way. Fenriz said they started writing these songs in late 1991 with one goal, a pure black metal album, and in June 1992 they took them to Creative Studios in Kolbotn and made the production as cold and as grim as they could.

The songs are shorter and more focused than on A Blaze in the Northern Sky, and they're buried under thick, fuzzy distortion that became part of the music rather than a layer on top of it. "Natassja in Eternal Sleep" opens in a blizzard of tremolo picking, "To Walk the Infernal Fields" and the title track keep up the frostbitten pace, and "Inn I de dype skogers favn" sinks into the Norwegian woods. It was the last album with guitarist Zephyrous, who left soon after.

Writers have since called it an aesthetic shift for the whole genre, the moment distortion came to define a black metal record from top to bottom. The sleeve credits it as grimly produced by Darkthrone, which may be the most accurate liner note we've ever read.

Also at Kops: more Darkthrone on vinyl · browse Metal

Tracklist

Listen

On Peaceville (cat# VILELP35), a reissue of the 1993 album.