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Category: black metal

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The last couple of years have been fairly turbulent and eventful for Bergen, Norway-based black metal pioneers Immortal. The mystic realm of Blashyrkh has seen a great deal of conflict and battle recently. Most of said battles seem not to concern itself with Blashyrkh although they are still fought in the North. As in the Northern courts. First Demonaz and Horgh battled estranged frontman (and multi-instrumentalist) Abbath over ownership of the ailing brand. The result was the uniformly and universally barbaric "Northern Chaos Gods" in 2018. Apparently in the intervening five years there was a falling out between co-founder Demonaz and longtime drummer Horgh. The sternly bearded, spiked, and corpse-painted Norsemen spent the pandemic years fighting each other over the trademark plunging the once unstoppable and war-forged Immortal in an extended second hiatus. Now that the legal dispute with Horgh has been settled Demonaz (effectively the sole remaining member through sheer will, determination, or attrition) is back with the suitably antagonistically titled "War Against All". Is the third time the charm? As soul singer Edwin Starr famously asked in 1970, “War, what is it good for?”

There’s no contesting the historical importance of Immortal’s contributions to the fledging Norwegian black metal scene. While chaotic and rambunctious “Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism” was a clear delineation between their past in Old Funeral and the present, conceptually and musically. The band truly came into their own and made their mark with “Pure Holocaust”. It offered a barbaric fusion of early Bathory and Blasphemy informed war-like black metal and “Battles In the North” streamlined that sound to ice-cold perfection. Each individual chapter of the Holocaust Metal trilogy stands recognized as an undefeated genre classic. The band started to lose its way with the sloppily executed “Blizzard Beasts”. The recording debut of Horgh was indeed bestial and a love-note to all things Morbid Angel but a subpar demo-like production reduced it to a whiff rather than the veritable storm it was ought to be. After years of performing acute tendinitis caught up with Demonaz forcing him into a more managerial role and Abbath promptly steered Immortal into a more easily digestible anthemic black/thrash metal direction for the trio of "At the Heart of Winter", "Damned in Black", and "Sons of Northern Darkness". In 2009 the grim and frostbitten duo reconciled for “All Shall Fall” and the rest, well, is history.

'War Against All' and 'Thunders Of Darkness' open the record in a classic one-two in tradition of 'Battles in the North' and 'Grim and Frostbitten Kingdoms'. 'Wargod' is the prerequisite slow-building epic Bathory worship track and very much modeled after 'Blashyrkh (Mighty Ravendark)', complete with an acoustic guitar break and slight washes of subdued keyboards exactly where you’d expect. 'No Sun' is an apparent callback to 'The Sun No Longer Rises' but is nowhere near as scorching with its steady marching trudge. 'Return to Cold' continues with the mid-paced march and is a very thinly-veiled retread of 'Blashyrkh (Mighty Ravendark)' structurally, melodically, and otherwise. 'Norlandihr' is an instrumental harking back to the days of "Pure Holocaust". 'Immortal' is Demonaz' (very obvious) state of intent and his attempt at creating a contemporary hymn in vein of 'Blashyrkh (Mighty Ravendark)'. Since "Battles in the North" closed out with a Blashyrkh-themed song "War Against All" concludes with "Blashyrkh My Throne". Familiarity tends to breed the blackest of contempt and while “War Against All” is uniformly strong a slightly broader musical scope and some variation (do another gloomy ‘Unholy Forces Of Evil’ or atmospheric ‘Mountains Of Might’ already) would be appreciated.

Having alienated or exhausted any and all former members for this session Demonaz hired latter day Enslaved bass guitarist Arve Isdal who has a well-established reputation as a notorious mercenary unencumbered by trivial things such as integrity (artistic, personal and otherwise) and who's in the habit of lending his services in the blink of an eye to whichever project is willing to part with the right amount of money. Drummer Kevin Kvåle is a relative newcomer and he follows the template of Horgh by delivering an absolute stellar performance with an avalanche of blasts and a cascade of double bass. The bass guitar was actually clearly audible and integral to the music when it was performed by Peter Tägtgren on "Northern Chaos Gods" here it's conspicuous only by its absence. Thankfully, Demonaz can still solo with the best of them. Perhaps it would be wise for Demonaz to make Kvåle a permanent addition to give Immortal sonic continuity and hire session bass players for live campaigns.

Ever since Demonaz took creative control Immortal has, for better or worse, become enamored with its own legend. If anything Blashyrkh is a concept ripe for expansion and exploration. For whatever reason (mostly nostalgia, if we were to make an educated guess) Demonaz has become a victim of his band's own limited creative mythology and instead of building and expanding upon established and existing concepts the post-Abbath albums are aggressively and regressively intertextual (often close to being embarrassingly self-referential) as far as the lyrics go. "Northern Chaos Gods" was emblematic of exactly that and "War Against All" perseveres with the nostalgic pastiche route regularly bordering dangerously close on parody. Nobody’s expecting Bal-Sagoth levels of detail but the whole Blashyrkh thing comes across as more of an afterthought rather than the supposed central concept. For a realm of might and magic Blashyrkh doesn't come off as very fantastic these days.

Demonaz continues to recycle past assets with this all too familiar looking Mattias Frisk artwork. While not ugly or unfitting it's little different from the monochrome Jannicke Wiese-Hansen drawing for "Northern Chaos Gods" and the Pär Olofsson digital rendering for “All Shall Fall” before that. It beggars belief that Nuclear Blast continues to let him get away with it too. It makes you long for the halcyon days when silly band photos were de rigueur. Now is the time to expand upon these concepts instead of repeating them with little to no variation. Looking to the past for inspiration is one thing but reducing Immortal to name-checking a handful of choice phrases and visual cues is doing nobody any favors. Oh yeah, the iconic (and vastly superior) original logo is still very much absent and very much missed. Make of that what you will. Immortal might be undying, unyielding but new blood is very much needed.

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Of all the fallen members from the short-lived “Stop At Nothing” line-up sometime Dying Fetus drummer, Midnight Video employee and former Wicked Woods Haunted Forest House operator Erik Sayenga has done the best for himself. Since his ousting from the Fetus in 2005 Sayenga has kept releasing music with Warthrone, his Virginia symfo death/black metal project that sees him handling rhythm guitars, drums, and vocals alongside his wife Kristel Dawn who provides keyboards and bass guitar. “Crown Of the Apocalypse” is only Warthrone’s second full length effort and the first to feature Sayenga in the position of frontman as Richard Johnson bade his farewell prior to the studio sessions. Compared vis-a-vis to “Venomassacre” from 2014 “Crown Of the Apocalypse” is superior on all fronts. Hell, even the artwork is decent this time around. This is the record that Dark Funeral’s “Where Shadows Forever Reign” should have been…

Which is more than you can say from the remainder of the “Stop At Nothing” line-up. Mike Kimball helped co-write “War Of Attrition” (the only real black page in the Fetus’ storied history) and the less said about Vince Matthews’ various projects the better. No, Sayenga has done good for himself all things considered. Kristel’s association comes from Virginia-based death/black metal combo Witch-Hunt (which Warthrone is a spiritual continuation of) that released their sole album “Soul Enshrouded Fire” in 2000. It came brandishing unintentionally hilarious gothic horror cover art that it makes you wonder why it was never distributed internationally by Napalm Records, who were infamous at the time for their so-called Breast Brigade artworks from designer Tor Søreide and photographer Petter Hegre. We were on the fence about Warthrone when we initially were introduced to them with “Venomassacre” and pretty much completely forgot about them until “Crown Of the Apocalypse” turned up in our social media feed. The few years between releases have worked wonders for Warthrone, it seems. They have heeded the critics and honed their assault accordingly.

Warthrone might not be the most novel thing around, but at least it knows what it wants to be and how to get there. Instead of the symfo black metal atmosphere they no doubt were aiming for “Crown Of the Apocalypse” exudes clinical modern death metal vibes, mostly of the Myrkskog kind. There’s just something about Warthrone that screams “Superior Massacre” or records of similar predilection. There’s a lot of things you can say about a band like Warthrone, but the long and short of it is that the whole black metal aspect is fairly negligible all things considered. Before anything else “Crown Of the Apocalypse” is death metal, plain and simple. And with Sayenga’s resumé, did anyone truly expect anything else? Erik and Kristel sound positively devastating on their sophomore. Kristel’s keyboards felt unnecessary to say the least and somewhat amateurishly pasted over the music on “Venomassacre”. Here they are integral to the compositions without ever becoming a dominant force or portentously overbearing.

Sayenga and his wife always had a penchant for Halloween and dressing up. In the promotional pictures accompanying the release Sayenga and his wife can be seen sporting post-apocalyptic/medieval garb that looks as if it came straight out of a budget-starved 1980s Filipino (Cirio H. Santiago would be proud) or Italian post-nuke movie. Not that you’d expect anything else from the former proprietor of Wicked Woods Haunted Forest House. Horror houses - especially in deep religiously diseased and red Southern states where they serve to keep the gullible, the uneducated, and the superstitious subservient and thus the larger Chrisian constituency in line – after all are big business in America. The epilepsy-inducing music video for ‘The Blood Of the Prophets’ is an atrocity of epic proportions and makes Immortal’s ‘Call Of the Wintermoon’, Hecate Enthroned’s ‘An Ode for a Haunted Wood’, and Unholy Ghost’s ‘Under Existence’ look as paragons of unbound professionalism and restraint in comparison. They’re clearly very devoted to their specific artistic vision. That has to count for something too.

The merits of a death metal record are judged by the quality of its production values and Warthrone has improved in leaps and bounds on that front since their first outing. “Venomassacre”, while a decent enough record, was marred by the typical defects of a home-recorded affair. “Crown Of the Apocalypse” is also home-recorded but sounds notably more professional in the way it was recorded and mixed. It would behoof any band, irrespective of the genre they play, to record in a professional studio environment but that increasingly appears to be a dying practice in underground metal. It makes you wonder what Warthrone could sound like if they ever decided to record at Nightsky Studios in Waldorf, Maryland instead of the comfort of their home. The artwork by Santiago Francisco Jaramillo for Triple Seis Design is something you’d expect from a Marcelo Vasco, Daniel Valeriani, or Gyula Havancsák. It looks like something you’d expect to see on a Horncrowned album, or bands of similar persuasion. Also partaking on the record are renowned British singer Sarah Jezebel Deva, Egyptian-American artist Nader Sadek, and Kim Dylla, of Kylla Custom Rock Wear, who for a short time performed as Vulvatron in GWAR.

Any way you slice it, “Crown Of the Apocalypse” is a vast improvement over their debut. We’re far more interested in high-quality playthrough videos or dedicated drum cam recordings from Erik’s home studio. There’s always additional streams of revenue to be mined if they know where to look. If Warthrone does insist on making more music videos it’s perhaps advisable for them to gather the necessary funds and hire somebody like David Brodsky, Kevin Custer, Rick Carmona, Darren Doane, or Chris João. Music videos, at least in terms of underground metal and niche music markets, are something of a dying breed ever since streaming services have made DVDs and televised music programs increasingly, if not entirely, redundant. No. “Crown Of the Apocalypse” shows that there’s tons of potential that is yet untapped. If Warthrone manage to cultivate that potential by the time the next album rolls around and accompany it with a professional music video or two they might just make a big enough splash and break themselves to a larger audience. It never hurts to have a goal…