Hooray, another Darkthrone album. Either you love this band, or you're a fag. There's no middle ground. The Cult is Alive takes the raw, punky approach of the last album Sardonic Wrath and slows it down to a more relaxed rock'n'roll pace, injected a lot more expression in the guitar department (half these songs have jamming, almost bluesy solo sections), and a whole lot of extra grim rawness. Thus, it moves even further away from the expectations most people would have for a Darkthrone disc, while remaining completely true to their trademark attitude.
The first single "Too Old Too Cold" is actually a fairly good representation of the whole album. The weird song here is "Graveyard Slut", where Fenriz provides a surprisingly clean vocal approach while the song itself is pure blackened swagger. Elsewhere, "Shut Up" is amusingly aggressive and "Whisky Funeral" just flat-out rocks. They seem to have gone back to the good old "4 tracker in the rehearsal room" approach to recording too, which gives the album a very abraded, rough sound – it's certainly much cleaner than, say, Transilvanian Hunger or Under A Funeral Moon, but also has a significantly thinner sound than the last few discs.
If you're expecting a return to the "Trilogy" and won't settle for anything else, don't bother with this. If you liked Hate Them and Sardonic Wrath, this is also worth investment. It's a grim, catchy, sometimes punky album which absolutely reeks of attitude and irreverence. In other words, pure Darkthrone.
