I consider late era Darkthrone to be more interesting than most of their career. They have been experimenting a lot lately and to decent results. I might even go so far as to say that Old Star is my favorite Darkthrone album after A Blaze in the Northern Sky. Yes, much better than Transilvanian Munchies. Yet the band has always been hit-and-miss, dependent on how well they can integrate their ideas and sense of humor into the actual music. Old Star mixed surprisingly urgent black metal riffs with epic/tragic doom and some progressive writing while Eternal Hails…… went all in on the Candlemass influence and progressive compositions. Astral Fortress sees these juggled styles miss the hand and fall bouncing away on the floor. The album feels much less like an interconnected album that the two before were and more like a collection of songs. This isn’t bad by itself as a vignette of songs can be powerful if arranged by a skilled hand. Alas, this is not so on Astral Fortress and it’s not for lack of skill.
Starting out strong, “Caravan of Broken Ghosts” features the doom riffs we have come to expect by now but they are interrupted by a neck breaking riff that keeps the song moving. Some notable ideas on the rest of the album include cold Krallice-like synth work (“Stalagmite Necklace”), some wonderfully weird vocals followed by more synth (“The Sea Beneath the Seas of the Sea”) and an out of character Iron Maiden lead complete with two guitars (“Eon 2”). I focus on these ideas because frankly, everything in between contains some of the most bland and time wasting material I’ve heard from Darkthrone in a long while. All the riffs stay in the same lane of uninteresting doom riffing and unfortunately it’s starting to sound like a crutch. It’s sad but it seems the burst of creativity they’ve had lately had to end in a crash somewhere. I’m always entertained by giving these guys albums a go because they’re so likable and productive, but this is one I’d not recommend even to diehard Darkthrone fans.
