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Carried on the brisk wind of eager rock, with foundations in black, thrash, doom and heavy metal, Astral Fortress is the 2022 album of stellar, eclectic old metal from the legendary Darkthrone.

With a seemingly endless dungeon full of heavy metal influences channelled through Darkthrone’s dynamic riff-machine, plus increasing inspirations taken from their own back catalogue, Darkthrone has become very much its own beast within the metal world. Though sprinkled with atmospheric touches, such as synthesisers and mellotron, the Darkthrone sound remains stripped to the core, primitive and organic.

Astral Fortress was recorded at Chaka Khan Studios in Oslo, the same location used for the Eternal Hails album, with Ole Øvstedal and Silje Høgevold.

From their formation back in 1986, to becoming one of Norways’s finest musical exports (with a number of highly revered black metal masterpieces released in the early 1990s helping to solidify their legacy), Darkthrone has continued to evolve and challenge in equal measure, throughout their illustrious recording career spanning over three decades. And now, the ever-productive duo of Nocturno and Fenriz continue their own metallic saga with a new selection of fine, vintage sounding headbanging classics in the making. 

Gatefold

Gatefold Double LP with golden UV spot laque and 16 pages booklet in 30x30cm with illustrations and lyrics.

3rd press on black vinyl

Black Vinyl, Gatefold sleeve

2018 re-release in black gatefold vinyl by AOP Records.
Artworks are done from the original photo used on the highly limited digipack from 2012

Marrok shares his very personal vision of serious art influenced by a wide range of genres. It's a blackened journey full of soundscapes between beauty and bleakness, hope and oppression, reality and the world beyond. Accordingly, each subgenre is utilized to its fullest potential without falling into cliche nor easy categorization, each one swelling until it's fit to burst, so overcome with passion and emotion.
 

Gatefold Double LP in black vinyl
 

Born and raised along the rural shores of the Danube river, the element of water has always had a shaping impact on Marrok's perception of nature and life in general. Throughout the new Anomalie album „Riverchild“ he drew a musical portrait of an entity still present around this immense stream which had always nurtured and taken lifes equally, a force able of spending hope and wisdom but also possesses the strength and wrath to destroy and destruct.Comparable to the multiple faces of a colossal river like the Danube, the music on „Riverchild“ provides a diverse range of facets taking the listener on a journey full of profound and honest emotions expressed through aggressive outbursts of pure Black Metal dissonance as well as fragile moments of introspectivecalmness. Anomalie once again asks for focus and patience, but offers a wider range of rewarding layers than ever before!