Transilvanian Hunger Review

Band	Darkthrone
Album	Transilvanian Hunger
Type	Album (Studio full-length)
Released	February 17, 1994
Genres	Black Metal
Labels	Peaceville Records
Length	39:05
Ranked	#8 for 1994 , #143 all-time

Reviewer :  TheBerzerker         Rating :  90 / 100

Darkthrone forms one of the three pillars of what I consider, and actually what most people consider, to be a 'true Norwegian black metal', along with Emperor and Mayhem. Like others have mentioned in their comments and reviews, their influence over latter generation of black metal stands impervious and still; though I believe it is mainly due to their second studio album "A Blaze in the Northern Sky". While Darkthrone established, let's say, a foundation for the black metal to thrive with their 2nd album, it seems like they are now showing some musical prowess to all musicians with "Transilvanian Hunger": despite their minimal structure; little variation in song structure with only 3~4 riffs per songs, it sounds like a qualitatively chock-fulled album like "Slumber of Sullen Eyes".

However, the true outstanding quality of this album lies on their clever song placement; "Transilvanian Hunger" is meaningless unless you go through the whole album at once, as if the songs were unavoidably separated from a one completed version. The individual songs are not as appealing as a whole, which somehow pleasantly forces the listeners to go over and over again with the album. Darkthrone is not the band which produces elusively sophisticated music with all the subtle implications of themes and motifs; Darkthrone IS the band which produces straight-forward, evilsonic and cold, instinctive music that they even had to name their album "Transilvanian Hunger", something we naturally crave; unlike the sexual instinct (one could probably find little argument with the notion that sex is very different from thirst or hunger as a motivational drive), which not only fulfills our biological needs but some crucial social ones as well, the "HUNGER" in the name indicates that this is not that damn complicated to understand, but the album is designed to satisfy some of the basic needs of the listeners, a crave for the better music, in a very minimal yet a beautiful way.