Stereogum skriver om Darkthrone 's album Plaguewielder:
"Plaguewielder is considered by most Darkthrone fans to be the band's absolute nadir — owing in no small part to the album's cover(!), which is the first and only Darkthrone sleeve to feature a full spectrum of colors (as opposed to stark black and white with occasional blue tones), and is — to be fair to the haters — truly, incomprehensibly offensive to the eye. In retrospect, though, the album has few critical flaws, and nothing at all that merits disdain: Culto's vocals and guitar work are fantastic, and his riffs are uniformly engaging; the sharp, robust production brings to the fore details of the performances that might have been lost given a more necro approach; and Fenriz's drumming sounds pretty goddamn great. The greatest sin committed by Plaguewielder is simply that it feels a bit generic: There's no shortage in this world of ably performed atmospheric black metal, and Plaguewielder brings nothing new to that subgenre, while also sort of burying its creators' musical identities in the process. Like Ravishing Grimness, the album is probably more worthwhile for keeping the band alive when they were on the verge of death than it is for any musical contributions, but it's not without its thrills (album closer "Wreak" is a stunning epic). If Ravishing Grimness and Plaguewielder are indeed the same album, then a savvy editor ought to come in, chop that beast in half, and release a six-song Ravishing Plague LP that might not rank with Darkthrone's best work, but would certainly provide a much more flattering portrait of Darkthrone's unjustly maligned midlife crisis."