I have tried to combine my way of playing to get the most darkness out of the riffs. It will contain more and more of the old spirit. The old spirit of Black Metal will be more present than in some years for us you know.
- Nocturno Culto / Darkthrone interview, Nocturnal Cult, 2002
Recorded at the end of 2002 with Lars Klokkerhaug (1968-2009) in Pan lydstudio, DARKTHRONE released Hate Them through Moonfog on this day in 2003.
...we are using a completely different studio now. A less good one than before but that doesn't have to mean a bad sound. But the thing is that I will use a completely different sound on the guitars so maybe people will get quite a shock when they hear it because it will sound very, very different from the previous Darkthrone albums. And the sound will be definitely more blurry. We will really put a lot of thought into the sound and the material is also is much darker than Plaguewielder, I would say. And very different because uh...and maybe more old school. For me its these days very difficult to make really primitive riffs but on this material I have not.
- Nocturno Culto / Darkthrone interview, Nocturnal Cult, 2002
The album had the working title Leper Unction. Writing began in May 2002.
[The title] Hate Them was, in the end, much more proper in connection with the lyrics on the album. Hate Them is, maybe - as you said - also a little Punk alike title, but hey, Darkthrone has a lot of the roots in Hardcore and Punk (that is shown clearly on the "trilogy").
- Nocturno Culto / Darkthrone interview, The Lodge, 2003
...it's very difficult to foresee anything on the albums because when we are going into the studio some things are decided already but the thing is that when you are in the studio a lot of things are coming to us but I have specific plans for Leper Unction, album design, sound and everything. So I will try and make this a real strong Black Metal package you know. So that's my only goal now and I really am enjoying making the songs now because I actually used a very long time on these 3 songs. Actually I had 2 songs 6 or 10 months ago which I just threw you know. No fuck this I have to put myself in an odd mood. And I did and I used actually a very long time to get the structure on these songs. So now I am satisfied and I am looking forward to it and I am also going to make another song for it. Actually we are going to rehearse next weekend, Fenriz and I and take pictures not for the album but at least for the website. Really looking forward to that rehearsal because it's been a long time since the last time. I think the last time was actually just before Plaguewielder.
- Nocturno Culto / Darkthrone interview, Nocturnal Cult, 2002
Cover artwork was designed by Eric Syre (THESYRE).
We have actually had a lot of bad reactions on Plaguewielder cover artwork. Some claim that it's typical Moonfog stuff Which I after some time can agree because that it really was a common guy in Moonfog but I actually order him some of the things he did but not much. I can say he did a really good job but in the future that is not what Darkthrone is about so we just have to do another thing. That was always the plan anyways. But Leper Unction will be I guess very familiar to the people who have listened to Darkthrone for a lot of years. Maybe people will feel more comfortable with it. But it's also our wish to do so because both Fenriz and I are very frustrated about the metal scene and we feel that we have to...we really have to just leave no doubt about what we stand for.
- Nocturno Culto / Darkthrone interview, Nocturnal Cult, 2002
From the old website:
...the new album seems to develop into another state of soul-binding art (at least for us it is), black & white album design, dark-edge primitive metal. This time around we'll make sure that we show everybody where we will stand in the future…As already everybody knows, DARKTHRONE stands for nothing 'new and fresh', prog-metal is a totally different musical world for us, we live and breathe for the real thing.