Esoteric Order ov the Riff has fifty-three subscribers. The latest video on his channel was uploaded on 9 May 2026, the day after Darkthrone dropped Pre-Historic Metal. He is wearing a Voivod t-shirt. There is a fireplace behind him. The guitar is plugged into something off-camera and the riff is Siberian Thaw from the new album.
His own description, posted under the video:
“Hail new Darkthrone and some great new doomy riffs. Please excuse my sloppy chugging. I’m very out of practice but couldn’t resist some new Darkthrone.”
That sentence is the entire reason this Riff Post exists.
What makes a riff worth practicing for again
You do not pick up a guitar after months of not playing for a band that requires technical precision. You do not pick it up to chase a clean shred passage at 180 BPM. You pick it up because a riff has hooked into your head and refuses to leave until you have at least tried to play it.
Darkthrone have spent forty years writing riffs that hook like that. Pre-Historic Metal — their twenty-second album, pointed deeper than ever into the first-wave roots — is full of them. Slow. Doomy. Memorable. The kind of riffs Fenriz writes the way Tony Iommi used to: by repeating the simplest possible figure until it becomes inevitable.
The musician’s-side proof
Esoteric Order is not a professional. Thirty-four views on his cover at the moment of writing. His chugging is, by his own admission, sloppy. The audio mix is what it is. None of that matters.
What matters is that the Siberian Thaw riff was strong enough that a rusty fan, the day after release, dragged his guitar out from wherever it had been sitting and tried to learn the song. He even promises the tab is “coming soon” in his video description.
That is the test of a riff. Not the studio recording. Not the chart position. Not the metal-press review score. A riff is great when it makes someone with fifty-three subscribers and a Voivod t-shirt pick up the guitar he has not touched in months.
Why this matters
The musician version of the metalhead — the one who plays in a band on weekends, the one whose guitar gathers dust between rehearsals — these are the people who decide whether a band like Darkthrone outlasts the hype cycle. Fenriz writes for them. Always has.
Watch the cover. Then go play the song yourself.
Listen to this: Pre-Historic Metal
