soulside journey reddit

Although Darkthrone are famous for being the quintessential Black Metal band, they didn’t start out as such. No question about it, A Blaze In The Northern Sky is a remarkable album and an extremely influential one, but for their debut full-length Darkthrone played a rather enjoyably technical form of Entombed -influenced Death Metal, not yet having been converted to kvltdom by Euronymous. Once you realise what an inspiration the Swedes were, then it’s hard to see why you haven’t noticed this strain of influence before. Comparing Left Hand Path and Soulside Journey it seems obvious, from the music to the lyrics, and Nocturno’s vocals are quite Petrovian. It’s not as good as that Swedish classic, as few albums are, yet whilst some may even go as far as accusing it of being monotonous, this is almost certainly the most catchy Darkthrone were up until Too Old, Too Cold .

Of course, Soulside Journey is not that different from Darkthrone ’s later works; the actual difference between Soulside Journey and A Blaze... is less than you’d think, in some ways less even than that of A Blaze... and Under A Funeral Moon ! Sure, Soulside Journey is more technical, but this is unmistakably Darkthrone , and though Fenriz and Nocturno Culto weren’t using their nom-de-plumes back then there’s no mistaking those deep growls from the latter. Heck, the self-styled ‘Hank Amarillo’ reveals far better drumming prowess here than he likes to on Darkthrone ’s Blacker albums, yet it’s not a million miles away from what devotees of the band post- Soulside are used to. Darkthrone are amongst the inventors of ironic sloppiness in Black Metal, and yet listening to Soulside Journey and knowing that the two could have gone on to be extremely respected for their instrumental skills is quite ironic as well.

Looking at this album for what it is, however, the ride’s a rollercoaster. Opening blast Cromlech is truly excellent, synths wailing for a brief second before the band rip out of the gate, riffing hard and powerfully with one of the most awesome breakdowns you’ll have ever heard and some decent songwriting keeping the twists coming, and songs stick to a high level of quality afterwards. Sunrise Over Locus Mortis is a piledriver, but placed as it is between Cromlech and the killer title track it’s a fair bet that you won’t remember much of it, as the title track does essentially the same thing but better. Little moments like the bass trill in Accumulation Of Generalisation are excellent, Fenriz and Nocturno being joined for this album by the mysterious Dag Nilsen, who left when the band turned Black Metal and was uncredited for his input on A Blaze In The Northern Sky .

If you don’t headbang uncontrollably to Neptune Towers ’ brutal riffing and gorgeous solo, then you are not worthy, it’s as simple as that, yet Soulside Journey isn’t quite a perfect album, being slightly samey at times and never quite hitting as high marks as the true greats of old-school Death Metal can. This album is more than a curio but less than mandatory; you will never regret owning it, but neither will it have quite the same effect as A Blaze In The Northern Sky and the albums afterwards. Be careful not to dismiss it outright, however, the likes of Iconoclasm Sweeps Cappadocia mixed progressive-minded Death Metal and Doom way ahead of their time, whilst The Watchtower is forward-looking in a way that’s quite unnerving. Considering that this was released in 1991, this is a damn fine piece of Death Metal that few fans will dislike.

There are 7 replies to this review. Last one on Wed Jul 29, 2009 11:35 pm View and Post comments

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Soulside Journey (25th Anniversary Edition)

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Astral Fortress 

By Brad Sanders

November 3, 2022

If Darkthrone had retired after 1992’s A Blaze in the Northern Sky , they still might have gone down as the most influential band in black metal history. The nihilistic Norwegian scene they emerged from ate bands alive, but Darkthrone survived. The same two-man lineup of Nocturno Culto and Fenriz has stuck around for 35 years now, and instead of milking their early success on anniversary-themed nostalgia tours, they’ve continued to make records. (They don’t even play shows, and never have.) There’s a new Darkthrone LP out every couple of years, and each one pushes the band a little further away from their black metal roots. Astral Fortress is the band’s 20th album, and like its immediate predecessors, Old Star and Eternal Hails , it finds Darkthrone in thrall to the analog warmth of ’70s hard rock and the thunderous stomp of classic doom.

The stakes never feel particularly high on Darkthrone albums anymore, which usually works in the band’s favor. They release a ton of music, and almost all of it is at least pretty good. Nocturno Culto and Fenriz have already pushed each other to peaks that few others have scaled, and if they now tend to sound more like a couple of aging pals jamming together, that’s their prerogative. Astral Fortress continues what the band calls their “old metal” era, and its songs are lumbering, prehistoric beasts, straightforward in structure and firmly in-the-pocket in execution. Fenriz can’t quite swing like Bill Ward behind the kit—he credits himself with “cave drumming” in the album’s sleeve—but he’s tapping into the same primordial well that once birthed Black Sabbath . He and Nocturno Culto both still sound genuinely enthralled by metal’s elemental power. The apparent effortlessness (and occasional silliness) of Astral Fortress could make it feel tossed off, but the band’s enthusiasm mostly prevents that from happening.

“The Sea Beneath the Seas of the Sea”—the album’s 10-minute centerpiece—best illustrates Darkthrone’s half-serious approach. (That begins with the title, which evokes fathomless Lovecraftian horror and the giddy idiocy of a rehearsal-room goof-off in equal measure.) It opens with a distant, reverb-drenched guitar line, an eerily effective run of notes that sets the scene for the primitive grandeur to come. Additional elements soon start to pile on—a series of hypnotic riffs, a simple, thudding drum pattern, Nocturno Culto’s inimitable rasp. The first six minutes build in density and mass before releasing all its tension in an unaccompanied recitation of the title that lands like a punchline. “The Sea” is an effective, economical epic that remains single-minded in its purpose, a reversal of the “riff salad” approach of some of Darkthrone’s previous long songs. It’s probably the best “Doomthrone” tune to date.

Isolated moments of greatness lurk inside every other song on Astral Fortress , too. “Impeccable Caverns of Satan” drops a chest-clearing “ough” that would make Tom G. Warrior blush. “Stalagmite Necklace” rolls out a handful of vintage keyboard sounds that serve as vital counterweights to some of the best riffs on the album. “Kevorkian Times” veers off its initially doomy course to briefly revisit the band’s crusty D-beat era, kicking the tempo up just when the album needs a shot of adrenaline. “Eon 2” has the album’s best lead guitar parts in what feels like a subtle nod to the last true Darkthrone masterpiece, 2013’s trad-metal-obsessed The Underground Resistance . If there’s any black metal on Astral Fortress at all, it’s only in the sense that if Darkthrone made it, it must be black metal.

Darkthrone’s reluctance to revisit their hallowed past has long been one of their most admirable qualities. Even A Blaze in the Northern Sky was a refusal to capitulate to audience expectations; it followed the band’s Swedish death metal-inspired debut, Soulside Journey . In true Darkthrone fashion, Astral Fortress feels like it was primarily made to satisfy Fenriz and Nocturno Culto. It’s an album that’s defined less by its sporadic moments of brilliance than its ambivalence about delivering them. At times, that can make it feel a little too low-key, but in a nostalgia-choked metal scene where legendary bands repeatedly return to the sound that secured their legacy, Darkthrone’s solitary path is refreshing.

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Reddit’s I.P.O. Is a Content Moderation Success Story

The site’s journey from toxic cesspool to trusted news source illustrates the business value of keeping bad actors at bay.

By Kevin Roose

Reporting from San Francisco

A decade ago, no one in their right mind would have put “Reddit” and “publicly traded company” in the same sentence.

At the time, Reddit was known as one of the darkest parts of the internet — an anything-goes forum where trolls, extremists and edgelords reigned. Light on rules and overseen by an army of volunteer moderators, Reddit — which once hosted popular communities devoted to nonconsensual pornography , overt racism and violent misogyny , among other topics — was often spoken of in the same breath as online cesspools like 4chan and SomethingAwful.

Few could have predicted back then that Reddit would eventually clean up its act, shed its reputation for toxicity and go public, as it did on Thursday at a $6.4 billion valuation .

Today, Reddit is a gem of the internet, and a trusted source of news and entertainment for millions of people. It’s one of the last big platforms that feel unmistakably human — messy and rough around the edges, sure, but a place where real people gather to talk about real things, unmediated by algorithms and largely free of mindless engagement bait. Many people, me included, have gotten in the habit of appending “Reddit.com” to our Google searches, to ensure we actually get something useful.

There are a lot of lessons in Reddit’s turnaround. But one of the clearest is that content moderation — the messy business of deciding what users are and aren’t allowed to post on social media, and enforcing those rules day to day — actually works.

Content moderation gets a bad rap these days. Partisans on the right, including former President Donald J. Trump and Elon Musk, the owner of X, deride it as liberal censorship. Tech C.E.O.s don’t like that it costs them money, gets them yelled at by regulators and doesn’t provide an immediate return on investment. Governments don’t want Silicon Valley doing it, mostly because they want to do it themselves. And no one likes a hall monitor.

But Reddit’s turnaround proves that content moderation is not an empty buzzword or a partisan plot. It’s a business necessity, a prerequisite for growth and something every social media company has to embrace eventually, if it wants to succeed.

In Reddit’s case, it’s no exaggeration to say content moderation saved the company.

In its early years, Reddit — much like a certain, Musk-owned social network today — styled itself as a free-speech paradise. Its chief executive from 2012 to 2014, Yishan Wong, proudly defended the site’s commitment to hosting even gross or offensive content, as long as it was legal.

But eventually, amid growing scrutiny, Reddit decided that it needed to police its platform after all. The company put in place rules banning harassment and nonconsensual nude images, nuked thousands of noxious communities and signaled it would no longer allow trolls to run the place.

Redditors howled at these changes — and Mr. Wong’s successor as C.E.O., Ellen Pao, was chased out by a horde of angry users — but the company’s pivot to respectability was an undeniable success. Reddit’s image has gradually improved under a co-founder, Steve Huffman, who came back in 2015 to run the site as chief executive, and Reddit was able to build the ad-based business model that sustains it today.

In particular, I want to single out three steps Reddit took to clean up its platform, all of which were instrumental in paving the way for the company’s public debut.

First, the company took aim at bad spaces, rather than bad individuals or bad posts.

Reddit, unlike other social media sites, is organized by topic; users can join “subreddits” devoted to gardening, anime or dad jokes. That meant that once the company made new rules banning hate speech, harassment and extremism, it faced an important question: Should we enforce the new rules user by user or post by post, as new violations are reported, or should we proactively shut down entire subreddits where these rules have been consistently broken?

Reddit, to its credit, decided on the less popular option. It nuked thousands of offensive and hateful subreddits, attaching culpability not to individual posts or users but to the spaces where toxic things frequently happen, on the theory that online spaces, like offline ones, often develop customs and norms that are hard to dislodge.

Harsh as it was, the approach worked. Years later, when researchers studied these changes, they found that Reddit’s subreddit bans had led to a measurable reduction in overall toxicity on the site. Users who had frequented the banned communities largely either left Reddit entirely or changed their behavior. The toxic spaces didn’t reconstitute themselves, and rule-abiding Redditors got the benefits of a cleaner, less hateful platform.

The second good decision Reddit made, when it came to content moderation, was to empower an army of volunteer moderators, rather than trying to do it all itself.

Most social media sites are policed in a centralized, top-down way, with either employees or paid contractors doing the daily janitorial work. But Reddit already had thousands of unpaid moderators who were often experts in their forums’ subjects and were passionate about keeping their communities clean and safe.

It tapped those existing moderators to help enforce its new, stricter rules, and built tools to help them root out bad behavior, such as an automated tool known as Automoderator, which moderators can customize to take certain actions on their behalf. It also allowed them to set rules for their forums that went beyond Reddit’s base-line policies.

At times, Reddit’s decision to empower moderators has been a double-edged sword. Last year, the company faced a revolt from moderators after it made changes to its pricing structure for third-party apps, charging developers more if they wanted access to the company’s data. (Reddit stood its ground, and most of the moderators eventually relented.)

But on the whole, the company has benefited enormously from giving its volunteer moderators wide latitude to create and enforce their own rules.

Finally, Reddit policed behavior rather than morality, and it did so without worrying too much about being seen as capricious or biased.

One impressive thing about Reddit’s approach to content moderation is that — rather than tying itself in knots trying to maintain the appearance of political neutrality and avoid angering right-wing partisans, as executives at Facebook did for years under heavy pressure from the company’s lobbying and policy division — Reddit focused on getting rid of users who were making things worse for other users, regardless of their politics.

This approach was memorialized in a 2018 article in The New Yorker that is required reading for anyone interested in the story of Reddit’s revival. The article showed Reddit employees grappling with tough decisions about barring Nazis, racists and violent ideologues from their platform. As they contemplated these moves, they weighed trade-offs and considered the implications. But they didn’t feel the need to, say, ban a left-wing subreddit for every right-wing subreddit they banned, or hide the fact that they were making what amounted to judgment calls.

“I have biases, like everyone else,” Mr. Huffman, Reddit’s chief executive, told the magazine. “I just work really hard to make sure that they don’t prevent me from doing what’s right.”

I don’t want to paper over Reddit’s flaws. Its users still have plenty of complaints, and the site itself isn’t exactly Disneyland. (Among other things, it hosts one of the web’s largest repositories of porn, a fact that has hurt it with advertisers.) Reddit has also struggled to make money, and lags behind larger social media networks when it comes to introducing new features.

But by taking content moderation seriously earlier than many of its rivals, and coming up with a sensible, scalable plan to root out despicable behavior, Reddit was able to shed its image as the sewage pit of the internet and become a respectable (if not yet profitable) public company.

Other social media companies should take note.

Kevin Roose is a Times technology columnist and a host of the podcast " Hard Fork ." More about Kevin Roose

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Reddit stock starts trading 38% above initial public offering price

Bobby Allyn

Reddit mascot Snoo rings the New York Stock Exchange opening bell, prior to the company's IPO, Thursday, March. 21, 2024. Yuki Iwamura/AP hide caption

Reddit mascot Snoo rings the New York Stock Exchange opening bell, prior to the company's IPO, Thursday, March. 21, 2024.

Investors have upvoted Reddit in droves.

Reddit stock began trading on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday after the initial public offering priced at $47 a share — topping its offering price of $34 for each share — as investors showed enthusiasm for a social media site that has ambitious expansion plans but has never been profitable.

With the pop of its opening price, notching just above $55 a share during the day, Reddit's valuation soared to around $10 billion, trading under the ticker symbol RDDT.

The IPO is being viewed as a test of investor appetite for a tech company to go public in an environment battling stubborn inflation, high interest rates and economic uncertainty, which have slowed the number of tech firms that have debuted on the stock market.

It is also seen as a gauge of Wall Street's interest in a social media company in an era where artificial intelligence is all the rage in the technology industry.

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman and company employees celebrate on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor, prior to his company's IPO, Thursday. Yuki Iwamura/AP hide caption

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman and company employees celebrate on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor, prior to his company's IPO, Thursday.

Reddit, a ragtag collection of message boards that draw close-knit communities where people discuss topics anonymously, has had a bumpy journey to becoming a public company over its nearly 19-year history.

Over the years, it has been beset with leadership crises and controversies over the proliferation of racist, misogynistic and other toxic content going unchecked before laboring to clean up its act more recently.

The premiere of Reddit on the New York Stock Exchange brought a lucrative payday for the parent company of Condé Nast, the owner of Reddit, which controls about a third of the company's shares. The publisher reaped more than 2 billion in the debut, after paying just $10 million for Reddit in 2006 through its holding company, Advance Publications. For the Condé Nast-owning Newhouse family, it was a 5,800% windfall, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates .

Behind the owner of Condé Nast, Reddit's No. 2 shareholder is Chinese tech company Tencent. Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, is Reddit's third-largest shareholder, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The U.S. sues Apple, saying it abuses its power to monopolize the smartphone market

A decent chunk of Reddit's shares have been set aside for users of Reddit, and individual investors, an uncommon move that could add an element of unpredictability to the stock. But it remains to be seen what kind of influence the regular Reddit users will have on the stock's performance.

Journey from college dorm room to the NYSE

Founded in 2005 by Alexis Ohanian and his dorm-mate at the University of Virginia, Steve Huffman, the site started as an gathering place for people to discuss politics, popular TV shows and memes, often veering into crude jokes and envelope-pushing humor. Elsewhere, though, the site exhibits pure joy, or absurdism. One Reddit community has sprung up around the sharing of photos depicting bread stapled to trees.

Huffman left the company, in 2009, only to return six years later as chief executive.

Ohanian, who is married to tennis superstar Serena Williams, left Reddit in 2018, and, in 2020, he stepped down from the company's board.

June 23, 2005. Version One of @Reddit . My first post ever was a link to the Downing Street Memo. Ship early. Ship often. pic.twitter.com/J7SgfZUHTr — Alexis Ohanian 🇦🇲 (@alexisohanian) March 21, 2024

The site became known for "AMAs," or "ask me anything" question-and-answer sessions that sometimes attracted prominent figures, like President Barack Obama , evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and actor Harrison Ford .

Its user base has gradually swelled, with now 73 million people visiting the site daily across more than 100,000 communities, according to the company.

Reddit has long been the world's most popular message board where scores of volunteer moderators decide the rules of each community — a level of autotomy unusual for a social network the size of Reddit, but something that has made many users forge deep ties and allegiances to the site.

Reddit users can purchase stock based on "karma"

In a letter earlier this month that accompanied its regulatory filing, Huffman, Reddit's CEO, said he hopes going public will benefit the site's community, along with investors. "Our users have a deep sense of ownership over the communities they create on Reddit," Huffman wrote.

As such, Reddit set aside about 8% of company share for superusers of the site, with each users' allotment determined by "karma," a kind of reputation assessment based on a user's contributions to the site.

In 2021, Reddit became the center of a stock market firestorm when a subreddit known as WallStreetBets helped organize small investors to send the stock of videogame retailer GameStop soaring to extraordinary highs, shooting up more than 1700 percent, an event that prompted a Wall Street trading frenzy and put the spotlight on Reddit's role in so-called meme stocks.

Ahead of the public offering, Redditors in WallStreetBets appeared eager to throw sand in the gears yet again by betting against Reddit for, as they see it, forsaking the site's scruffy authenticity in order to maximize profits.

"Reddit cannot pivot into something that will magically attract new users to the cite creating a miracle monetization regime," wrote one user in WallStreetBets. "The golden age of Reddit has passed, if it ever existed...The desperate attempt to cling to an overvalued market price will destroy the company from the top throughout the long term."

"It's time we grow up and behave like an adult company"

In recent months, Reddit has taken a number of controversial steps widely seen as preparing for a public offering, which it first unveiled plans to take the public public. Among them, charging third-party developers for access to its back-end data. The change prompted thousands of Reddit communities to stage an organized blackout.

Last June, Huffman told NPR that Reddit did not change the company's plans to start charging for data, despite how it upended the popular site.

"It's a small group that's very upset, and there's no way around that. We made a business decision that upset them," he said.

Reddit becoming a public company has made many diehard Reddit bristle since the corporatization chafes against the renegade spirit of the site.

In response, Huffman told NPR in June that the reckoning that Reddit is now in the grips of has been long overdue.

"We're 18 years old," Huffman said. "I think it's time we grow up and behave like an adult company."