Back in the early 90s Darkthrone was releasing their best material in the form of black metal classics such as A Blaze in the Northern Sky and Transilvanian Hunger. Things were going just fine, but Darkthrone half, Fenriz, wanted to experiment with synthesizers. Black metal is all well and good (err…bad and evil?), but it’s not the kind of genre where you’ll be able to experiment with Tangerine Dream-style kosmiche. Fenriz explained in an interview that he made some synthesizer music intended for Darkthrone albums, but decided against it because it wouldn’t fit right. Enter Neptune Towers, a project Fenriz described as, “Avant Garde Astral/Alien Synth.” Pretty fitting.
So, yeah, you can sum it up pretty easily as “black metal guy jams out to some Tangerine Dream,” but who wouldn’t want to hear that? The first album, Caravans to Empire Agol, is the better of the two in my opinion. Consisting of two tracks, “Caravans to Empire Agol” and “The Arrival at Empire Agol,” the album is concerned with soundtracking the journey through this strange alien world. While Empire Agol seems like a place you would never want to go near, I don’t mind vacationing there while this dark little album plays.
