Immortal - At the heart of winter

You know, Immortal gets a lot of shit. They get shit for looking ridiculous, get shit for just being a black metal band, and get shit for being probably the best-known/most accessible black metal band out there. Well, fuck the haters, man. Sure they look ridiculous. It's fun to look ridiculous, and they like to do cheesy shit. There are some great guitar instructional videos you can find on youtube featuring Abbath Doom Occulta showing how to play some of his riffs. He's drunk and wearing cheesy shades instead of corpse paint and anytime he pinches a harmonic, he intentionally makes the goofiest rock face he can muster. They aren't always just grimness and icicles, you know.

Anyway. This one is sort of a turning point for the band, as guitarist/lyricist Demonaz had to give up playing due to some horrible tendonitis. Abbath took over the guitar duties and Demonaz had to take a less hands-on approach to making music in Immortal. And I'm not trying to take a swipe at the guy, but this is my overall favorite album of theirs. They were over their love affair with lo-fi recording, they had their best drummer yet, (Horgh fucking rules, dudes) and the riffage was the grimmest and most apocolyptic it had ever been, due in no small part to the incorporation of some thrash influence. Naturally, the lyrics were about their made up fairy-tale frostbitten and war-torn kingdom of Blashyrkh and its sovereign, THE MIGHTY RAVENDARK. Fuck you, I know it's corny. But it's pretty hard to understand anyway, in Abbath's gravely growl that sounds like "GROARGH GROARGH GRIMNESS GRAAHR RAVENDARK BLARGH RARGH BLACKNESS AND COLD" which is awesome, so it really doesn't matter that the subject matter is easy to mock. It just sounds cool. Oh yeah, Horgh. Horgh's drumming really kicked things up a few notches. Blast beats aplenty, but he plays with a lot more groove than their other drummers and is generally just a lot more interesting to listen to in addition to keeping better time. Abbath had played drums on their other records prior to Horgh's joining, and they had touring drummers, but really Horgh is zillions of times better than they were. Abbath played everything else on the record, which is the guitars and bass and the synthesizers they added in an intro or two, and in the middle of a couple of songs for that classic european glorious "AAAAHHHHHHH" sound like when the sky opens up and something is revealed. There are lots of changes in all the songs, lots of good riffs and apocalyptic heaviness. This is the Immortal album I usually listen to. Every single song is fucking rad, every fucking note is great, and coming from a frozen land myself, the winteriness of it makes me happy. Immortal just came out with a new one a couple weeks ago. I need to pick it up. Carry on, Abbath, Demonaz, and Horgh. You guys rule.