ALBUM REVIEW: Immortal, "Northen Chaos Gods"

By: Daniel Jackson

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 6/7/2018

Label: Nuclear Blast

Fans of each era of Immortal will find something that speaks directly to them, and as a beginning for a new era in Immortal’s career, it’s an obviously strong one.

‘Northern Chaos Gods’ CD//CS//LP//DD track listing:

1. Northern Chaos Gods

2. Into Battle Ride

3. Gates to Blashyrkh

4. Grim and Dark

5. Called to Ice

6. Where Mountains Rise

7. Blacker of Worlds

8. Mighty Ravendark

The Review:

The story surrounding ‘Northern Chaos Gods’, Immortal’s first new album in nearly nine years, is all about what transpired during their long hiatus, and the absence of their longtime and charismatic front man Abbath. It’s a difficult thing, trying to move out from under the shadow of someone whose personality and voice were so intrinsically linked with the band’s very existence. On social media, the announcement of this album was plagued by comments from long time fans deriding the very thought of Immortal continuing without Abbath. It felt like an impossibility to them, like trying to imagine Motörhead without Lemmy.

Heavy metal history is brimming with stories of bands trying to continue on without legendary vocalists: Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and so on. And we know that those stories rarely end with the band continuing to succeed at a similar level once that change is made. But there are exceptions to that rule. The most prominent example of this, at least from an extreme metal perspective, is probably Cannibal Corpse. Corpsegrinder has proven to be a more dynamic vocalist and an equally, if not more engaging live performer. It’s hard to find the basis for an argument that the band’s popularity has suffered without Chris Barnes, as you won’t find any evidence supporting that idea based on comparing sales for last year’s Six Feet Under and Cannibal Corpse albums.

Making predictions for something like this is never easy, but the Cannibal Corpse analogy may hold water still, even though they and Immortal represent different subgenres. Cannibal Corpse’s first post-Barnes album was ‘Vile’ in 1996, an album that was met with mixed reviews from fans. And while it’s pretty likely that ‘Northern Chaos Gods’ will fare somewhat better in its reception, there are some issues with the album that deserve consideration.

The main concern I have with ‘Northern Chaos Gods’ is what I’ll call “going to the same well too many times” with certain compositional choices. In specific, it’s using very similar-sounding triplet-based clean guitar parts in several songs throughout the album. They first appear early on in the song “Gates of Blashyrkh” and show up again and again as the album goes on. Directly related to this is Demonaz’ continued love affair with viking-era Bathory, which in and of itself isn’t a bad thing. But the way that slower, epic sound manifests itself here causes the album to lag somewhat as we get late into the album. By the time “Mighty Ravendark” ends, we’ll have heard the “clean triplet guitar interlude into epic Bathory” device in three separate songs. For those who remember Demonaz’ solo album ‘March of The Norse’, you’ll remember that nearly every song on that album featured the same central rhythm. The man gets a specific musical idea in his mind and isn’t afraid to invest huge chunks of an album to that one idea, exploring it from every possible angle over an album’s duration. The repetition isn’t as difficult to sit through here, but it definitely warrants discussion.

Where ‘Northern Chaos Gods’ shines brightest is when it’s going full speed ahead. The lead single and title track was absolutely the right choice to showcase up front, with its callbacks to the pitch black frenetic energy of ‘Battles in the North’. ‘Into Battle Ride’ is another blast fest, sticking out in particular because it’s the only song on the album in which large sections of it are in straightforward 4/4 time, with the triplet rhythms waiting nearly a full minute before coming into play. “Grim And Dark” is a great combination of the two central styles of the album, with blast beats giving those giant chord progressions some extra energy via Horgh’s blistering speed.

‘Northern Chaos Gods’ is largely a great album. I’ve spent a large section of this review pointing out the album’s faults and hammering Demonaz for dwelling on a certain compositional style, and that’s because I think that’s a valid criticism of what he’s shown us as a composer between his solo album and now this album. But even keeping that criticism in mind, this is still a better album than Abbath’s solo album, which hasn’t held up especially well as time has gone by. Abbath’s album definitely holds the advantage in variety, but ‘Northern Chaos Gods’ is better as a fully realized listening experience. Fans of each era of Immortal will find something that speaks directly to them, and as a beginning for a new era in Immortal’s career, it’s an obviously strong one.

“Northern Chaos Gods” is available digitally here and on CD/CS/LP here. 

Band info: Facebook

Abbath - "Abbath" (Album Review)

By: Daniel Jackson

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 22/01/2016

Label: Season of Mist

Abbath remains a creature of two minds, willing to both sprint and pace himself for a marathon, and he continues to produce at a top-tier level, whichever mode he’s in. Because of the long wait between this album and the last Immortal album, having new material from Abbath felt like an event, before I’d even heard a note. This album lives up to that anticipation, provided you weren’t anticipating “Pure Holocaust: Part II”, or something wildly different from the albums he’s released over the last fifteen years.

‘Abbath’ CD//LP//CS//DD track listing:

1. To War

2. Winterbane

3. Ashes of the Damned

4. Ocean of Wounds

5. Count the Dead

6. Fenrir Hunts

7. Root of the Mountain

8. Eternal

Abbath is:

Abbath | Guitar, Vocals

King | Bass

Creature | Drums

The Review:

At this point, a brief history lesson about Abbath feels like an almost absurd thing to include because he’s almost certainly one of the three biggest names (and most recognizable faces) in black metal. It’s gotten to a point that people with no interest in heavy metal at all are sharing memes featuring his likeness. But, I’m going to do it anyway, because there’s nothing I love more than a good round of 90s black metal nostalgia.

Even if Abbath had opted to disappear entirely, following his split with Immortal after nearly twenty-five years as a band, his career would still have been legendary. Immortal is so synonymous with black metal as a genre, that it’s difficult to come up with a black metal stereotype (other than Satanism) that isn’t at least somewhat connected to the band in some way. It’s also no deep analysis on my part to note that Immortal’s sound changed over the years. That might have been an effort to stay with or even ahead of the times, but it might also have been because a lot of metal musicians tend to replace raw energy and ferocity with stronger song writing. Abbath himself moving from bass to guitar following ‘Blizzard Beasts’ no doubt played a big part in that change as well.

Whatever the reason, there was a clear shift toward the melodic end of the spectrum starting with ‘At the Heart of Winter’. ‘Damned in Black’ was something of a blunt, angrier cousin to ‘At the Heart of Winter’, but it served as a solid transition album en route to the album which sets our expectations for Abbath’s work in 2016: ‘Sons of Northern Darkness’. That was the album where Immortal really perfected the art of implementing traditional heavy metal song writing in a black metal context. It had the sharp immediacy of “Damned in Black”, but regained the knack for icy melody the band showed with ‘At the Heart of Winter’.

 Abbath, on his self-titled solo debut, follows the general pacing of that album fairly closely, though the gap between the catchiness of the more accessible moments and the viciousness of the pure black metal moments is perhaps the widest it's ever been. As it turns out, the hype in the months leading up to the album’s release hinted pretty strongly at the album's overall direction, without releasing a note of new music to do it.

Back in Late September and then again in October of 2015, Abbath’s official YouTube channel posted two slickly-produced, live-in-studio cover videos of songs from Abbath’s career. The first was “Warriors” from I, Abbath’s now nearly ten year old side project. The song sounds like Immortal via post ‘Blood Fire Death’ Bathory, which is a reasonable starting point comparison for this album’s more immediate, consumable songs.

The second cover song video was of Immortal’s “Nebular Ravens Winter”, from the album ‘Blizzard Beasts’, which is arguably the band’s least accessible and most chaotic album to date. Part of that owes to a seemingly botched production job, which was bad enough that Immortal has considered re-recording the album over the years. The other part of what makes ‘Blizzard Beasts’ the most challenging Immortal album is that the compositions are only a step or two removed from being feral. The riffs were fast and furious on that album, to such an extreme that writing, rehearsing, and recording for the album at least partially led to Demonaz getting tendonitis so severe that he was never to play guitar in Immortal again.

The video for “Nebular Ravens Winter” was possibly meant as an indication that Abbath wasn’t going to be leaving extremity behind on this album, which is absolutely true. Almost from the outset, after about a minute and a half of arguably unnecessary tension-building, “To War!” explodes, with a riff and blast beat combination that would do ‘Battles in the North’ proud. It’s important to remember that this is Abbath in 2016, so the pace relents sooner than it would have in 1995. That might even be for the best, but nevertheless the point is made clear early: Abbath is still capable of that old frostbitten black magic whenever he wants to be.

That the album is as extreme as it is. might be the biggest surprise of all. I certainly expected Abbath to settle into a more commerce-friendly sound when left purely to his own devices, but here I am a fool for having thought so. “Ashes of the Damned” stylistically recalls “Throned By Blackstorms”, another reference to ‘Battles in the North’, albeit much more polished on this album. Even with the hilariously corny—and thankfully brief—keyboard horn blasts straight from a 90s Bal-Sagoth album, the song sits nicely among the many classic Immortal blast fests over the years.

The accessible side of things is slightly more hit-and-miss. “Winterbane” works insanely well, moving in back and forth between a verse driven by locomotive double kick and a stomping, straightforward rock chorus. The song represents the ideal Abbath anthem, compounding those cold nordic riffs into easy-to-swallow sugar pills. Later in the album, “Count the Dead” is only about half as effective as it could be because the the main opening riff is a strange, ill-fitting radio metal riff. It’s better than this sounds, but the drum beat serving as the song’s backbone is oddly reminiscent of Linkin Park’s “Faint”, though I still wouldn’t place the song in the nu-metal category.

Thankfully, “Count the Dead” acts as the album's only real weak point, with the other songs admirably filling their respective roles. Abbath remains a creature of two minds, willing to both sprint and pace himself for a marathon, and he continues to produce at a top-tier level, whichever mode he’s in. Because of the long wait between this album and the last Immortal album, having new material from Abbath felt like an event, before I’d even heard a note. This album lives up to that anticipation, provided you weren’t anticipating “Pure Holocaust: Part II”, or something wildly different from the albums he’s released over the last fifteen years.

You can pick up a digital copy here and a CD/LP/CS copy here.

Band info: Facebook