Darkthrone's Panzerfaust as Therapy Album

When an album still impresses you after 20 years, it's probably a keeper. At the time of its release, Panzerfaust was considered a gritty blackmetal album with brutal vocals over fuzzed out melodies. It now seems like a therapy album diagnosing the modern soul being made ill by a dull society with insane ideologies, and offering a remedy of simplicity to restore innate sensibilities. Social pressure insists that you thoughtlessly acknowledge popular notions as correct and wise, never considering their implications, but as soon as you commit this fraud in service of lies and nonsense, you begin drifting away from reality, and the disease soon festers into confusion and despair.

Several Norwegian bands indicated the spiritual importance of their resistance by marking the year of their releases with the denotion A.Y.P.S. ("Anno Yesinia Pestis Spiritus"), Latin for "In the Year of our Spiritual Plague", both signifying an error and suggesting a new era could emerge. Satyricon's The Shadowthrone released in the same year as Panzerfaust opened with the declaration "Kampen mot Gud og hvitekrist er igang!"

Darkthrone saw that a profoundly sick culture based on lies could not last and placed an all-in bet on nature's reclamation and restoration. Strong souls aware that they need not suffer this misery would surely reemerge to reclaim their rich heritage.

Judeo-Christianity was the presumptive target for the attack because it was a friction-causing apparatus of Middle Eastern culture out of place in the well established pagan polytheism of Northern Europe.

At the time, churches were being burned to reclaim ancestral holy land, and songs like To Walk The Infernal Fields made it clear that Judeo-Christianity could be destroyed and that it would be attacked to achieve that end:

With my art I am the fist
In the face of god

Germans in the second World War named their anti-tank weapon Panzerfaust, literally Tank Fist, which allowed a brave soldier to line up with an approaching tank and fire a shot that penetrated its armor to issue a destroying blow.

Panzerfaust was written and recorded over a long winter. With a surplus of personal inner warmth nestled away and a self-sufficient soul that dutifully meets hardship head-on while not pondering their situation, Nordics instinctually prevail over terrible winters without growing bitter.

The cover art is a traditional monochrome winter scene of a shadowed forest hillside in the snow. The sun barely over the horizon as a bleak sleeping pulse, present but not strong enough to exert much influence, holding promise that it will soon reemerge in a sudden undeniable sustained burst clearing away the blanket of cold.

1. En Vind Av Sorg

The first track opens with a probe into the origin of palpable weakness. Depression has arisen because traditional intergenerational wisdom has been interrupted. We search for the cause impeding our cheerfulness and love.

Til Skogen hjem en Kom og trakk luften inn Her lukter det Kristen manns blod - igler på Våre Hjerter

To a forest home one came and drew the air in Here he smelled the Christian man's blood - Leaches on our hearts

We know that depression makes rational, perhaps as a saving mechanism for a situation that needs special powers. The realization of what events mean have shaken morale. Depression isolates and focuses, temporarily overriding dreamy artistic considerations with icy logic so you can find a way to stable ground and recover from the event you needed to process. Depression is medicine for a short-term injury, and inherent strength must rebound itself rather than dig its hole deeper, or else the sinking will stay sunk.

Our home is still here, and we can get our hearts and souls back to rediscover what our ancestors had, which belongs to us and our children, and thus the frail and breaking chain can be restored.

2. Triumphant Gleam

Most have been blinded to what is before them, pushed to seek false targets. Victory is attainable, and by any means necessary. In the early 1990s, churches in Åsane, Storetveit, Skjold, Holmenkollen, and Fantoft burned, showing that pagan ground reclamation did not always utilize formal legal remedies or sanctioned mediation. Though many people had forgotten the past and capitulated, everything remained possible.

3. The Hordes of Nebulah

In a vast universe of being and nothingness, we are alone in a massive space and engulfed by time and distance. The solitude of cold stars and distant planets is equally upon us on our home planet, and we look out to escape as much as explore.

So much can be done but we are small and our time is short. The past quickly races beyond us and remains inaccessible. Even modest distances will likely never be reached and no observers would witness it or care in any case. Yet, that which is worth doing should be performed even if no one else ever knows in the history of the universe.

4. Hans Siste Vinter

Om hjertet brant hans sjel, var vill

His heart was burning, wild was his soul

Odin has not died. A great untamed pagan warrior treks into battle on his last winter, in which he will perish but gain victory over the Middle Eastern religions and cultures, allowing space for his people to reclaim their rightful destiny.

5. Beholding the Throne of Might

Burn down impositions without hesitation. This result is inevitable. Churches are already burning and soon all impositions will be toppled, others will see, discard their blind obedience, join in finishing off the invader culture, and a new future will emerge.

and the Burning slaves and the Burning holy will be seen from afar ... Join us We Are (the) Future Now Be Desecration Master Be The Hammer

6. Quintessence

Great power and ability have awoken. Huge dreams fuel huge actions. Defiant knowledge displays through heroic efforts. Enemies are paper actors easily vanquished and all problems are solved by facing them bravely. Bold, thoughtful defiance shines the way forward.

7. Snø og Granskog

This Vesaas poem reminds to come back to native culture where the truth we know well will always nourish its people. It was always there, and remains there (for us). We all wish to be where we belong and have what is ours.

That feeling that flares within can be restored to burn strong and wild.

Tale om heimsleg -- Snø og granskog er heimsleg. Frå fyrste stund er det vårt Før nokon har fortalt det, at det er snø og granskog, har det plass i oss -- Og sidan er det der heile, heile tida. Meterdjup fonn kring mørke tre -- det er for oss! Innblanda i vår eigen ande. Heile, heile tida, om ingen ser det har vi snø og granskog med. Ja lia med snøen og tre ved tre så langt ein ser, kvar vi er vender vi mot det. Og har i oss ein lovnad om å koma heim. Koma heim, gå borti der, bøyge greiner, --- og kjenne så det fer i ein kva det er å vara der ein høyrer til. Heile, heile tida, til det er sløkt i våre innlandshjarte.

Talk about what home is -- snow and spruce forest is home. From the first hour it is ours Before anyone has told us that it is snow and spruce forest, it has its place in us --- and then it is there the whole, whole time. Meter deep drift around dark trees -- it's here for us! Mixed into our own breath. The whole, whole time, though no one sees it, we have snow and spruce forest with us. Yes, the hill under snow and tree upon tree as far as you gaze, wherever we are we find ourselves facing this. And have in us a promise about coming home. Coming home, going out there, bending branches, -- and feeling so it flares in you what it is to be where you belong. The whole, whole time, until it's extinguished in our inland hearts.