Satyricon – Dark Medieval Times (1993)

May 5, 2023

Dark Medieval Times is one of those weird albums that I really love despite having no personal stand-out tracks. It just flows so well, and the production and / or atmosphere are absolutely on point. In fact, I’d even go as far as saying that the recent remaster of this thing (despite having sub par artwork) goes a long way in evening out some of the feel that this record is cobbled together from various different sessions (I’m not certain if it is or not, but it sounds like that).

Early Satyricon is genuinely good early 90s black metal, on par with the contemporaries of the time, but paying more attention will reward you; Frost’s drumming, even here in these halcyon days, is incredibly busy and frenetic. He doesn’t have the signature sound here that he would develop later, but most of this is down to production. Behind the reverb and frosted riffs, the man is there, thumping away as he always is, to the excellent quality we expect.

But yeah, excellent stuff.