Ravishing Grimness is the seventh studio album by Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 black metal

Black metal

Black metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. Common traits include fast tempos, shrieked vocals, highly distorted guitars played with tremolo picking, blast beat drumming, raw recording, and unconventional song structure....

 band Darkthrone

Darkthrone

Darkthrone is a Norwegian black metal band. They formed in 1987 as a death metal band, but after embracing the black metal style in 1991, they became a driving force in the Norwegian black metal scene. For most of this period Darkthrone has consisted of just two musicians, Nocturno Culto and...

. It was released through Moonfog Productions in 1999.

This album marked a noticeable shift in the band's musical and lyrical scope. While still retaining much of the band's older black metal roots, the music itself is more slow-to-mid-paced with lesser blast beating drums than on previous albums, and the album's production is cleaner and clearer than previous albums; this has led to some criticism against the band by long-time fans. Nocturno Culto wrote the music for all the songs, except "The Beast", which was the sole musical contribution by Fenriz, who contributed lyrics instead. The album's lyrics also started to move away from the group's original topics, taking on more mysterious and avant-garde topics versus the Satanic/anti-religious themes of old.

In the album's booklet, Nocturno Culto is credited as "Nocturnal Cult". Also, all the Ts in the liner notes and lyrics are replaced with inverted crosses.

Track listing

1. "Lifeless" – 5:42
2. "The Beast" – 5:30 (Fenriz, Aldrahn, Fog)
3. "The Claws of Time" – 7:03
4. "Across the Vacuum" – 7:14
5. "Ravishing Grimness" – 7:26
6. "To the Death (Under the King)" – 4:45

Personnel

• Nocturno Culto
  Nocturno Culto
  Nocturno Culto is a Norwegian musician, best known as the vocalist, lead guitarist and partial bassist of the influential black metal band Darkthrone. He has been with the band since 1988. He currently works in Norway as a school teacher, and has a son and a daughter...
  
   – electric guitar
  Electric guitar
  An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...
  
  , bass guitar
  Bass guitar
  The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
  
  , vocals
  Singing
  Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...
  
  
• Fenriz
  Fenriz
  Leif Gylve Nagell , better known as Fenriz, is the drummer and lyricist of the Norwegian black metal duo Darkthrone...
  
   – drums
  Drum kit
  A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....