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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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The California Bay Area has long been a home to some of the most technical death metal around. The slow but inevitable dissolution of Necrophagist, the continuing studio hiatus of Odious Mortem, and the folding of Spawn Of Possession and more recently Brain Drill has acted as a catalyst for the formation of several domestic and international supergroups. Continuum from Santa Cruz was formed in 2009 by sometime Decrepit Birth guitarist Chase Fraser and is home to former members from Brain Drill, Inanimate Existence, and post-Jacoby Kingston Deeds Of Flesh. After several years of incubation Continuum debuted in 2015 with “The Hypothesis”. “Designed Obsolescence” harkens back to the halcyon days of pre-2005 when Unique Leader was a boutique label specialized in death metal exclusively. With Inherit Disease no longer under contract, Continuum is hellbent on replacing them as the label’s flagship act.

Fraser has surrounded himself with quite the talent. Riley McShane is also in Allegaeon and fronted Inanimate Existence for an album, Ivan Munguia has played with Odious Mortem, Nick Willbrand has recorded an album with Flesh Consumed, and Ron Casey is probably the most in-demand drummer of the last decade and a half. He, like Munguia, was involved with Brain Drill and appeared on their “Quantum Catastrophe”. With an assembly of this caliber “Designed Obsolescence” could’ve easily succumbed to masturbatory excess and egocentric indulgence, yet somehow it never does. Fraser is able to rein in everybody’s showboating tendencies and everything is always in service of the song. The only somewhat puzzling choice is placing Ivan Munguia on rhythm - instead of bass guitar. Willbrand is certainly up for the task but he’s no Jeroen Paul Thesseling, Linus Klausenitzer, Steve DiGiorgio, Michael Poggione, Erlend Caspersen, Giulia Pallozzi, or Éric Langlois. Which doesn’t make Continuum any less than a gathering of local mega talent and something that sounds right at home next to Omnihility, Equipoise, and latter-day Decrepit Birth as well as Canadian acts Augury, Beyond Creation, and First Fragment. For better or worse, Continuum is very much a product of its time.

Continuum takes more than a page or two from now-defunct Swedish act Spawn Of Possession and the shadow of “Cabinet” and “Noctambulant” looms large over “Designed Obsolescence”. Fraser and his men give it enough of a Californian flavor and his soloing is more than a little reminiscent of somebody like Jonas Bryssling. McShane for the most part sounds like Obie Flett from Inherit Disease but tends to alternate more between highs and lows. The swelling orchestral flourish in ‘Designed Obsolescence’ is a nice little touch that immensely enhances the atmosphere. The concept isn’t whole that novel as Soreption did it earlier on “Engineering the Void” in 2014 and bands as Fleshgod Apocalypse and Scrambled Defuncts have made it their entire raison d'être. ‘All Manner Of Decay’ is custodian to probably the best solo of the record. The bass guitar is felt more than heard but is allowed slightly more space in ‘Autonomic’. ‘Repeating Actions’ concludes with the same riff that opens ‘Theorem’ thus creating a semblance of inter-track continuity. The stars of Continuum are definitely Chase Fraser and drummer Ron Casey. The more progressive setup gives Casey is far more freedom to flex his muscles, whereas the narrow confines of Brain Drill restricted what he could do behind the kit. The Pär Olofsson artwork really drives home how apt the Spawn Of Possession comparisons are. At this point you’d imagine the scene having on moved on from Olofsson. Apparently not. For a band as forward-thinking as Continuum it’s surprising that they haven’t discovered Guang Yang, Aditia Wardhana, César Eidrian, Federico Musetti, Dusan Markovic, Monte Cook, or Johnson Ting yet.

It’s not so much a question about ability, either individually or collective, but whether Continuum will be able to differentiate itself enough from competition, foreign and domestic. While there are some mild New Age textures and sparse orchestral enhancements it remains to be seen how and if Continuum will be able to differentiate itself from similar acts as Inanimate Existence, and post-“Procreating An Apocalypse” Inherit Disease. Inanimate Existence is aesthetically different enough through its New Age spirituality imagery and Inherit Disease were among the earlier to push a dystopian futurist and technology-based lyrical concept. Not that that was in any way novel in and of itself. There was after all a little band called Fear Factory who did it earlier than anyone else. The concept of “designed obsolescence” has been commonplace in industrial design and economics for several decades and concerns the intentional planning of a product to become obsolete within a set timeframe as to generate long-term sales volume by repeat purchases of said product. The lyrics about the omnipresence of technology, artificial intelligence, the singularity, and the loss of identity in the digital matrix are interesting and certainly eloquent enough. There’s certainly something slightly ironic about an album title like this when Continuum is one among many such ventures and one bound to tie itself to a certain time-period.

Unique Leader remains one of the most reliable houses of quality death metal, although they arguably lost some of their luster when they started signing deathcore en masse. Continuum is as good as anything from the Unique Leader stable and that they sound like one or two bands that used to be on the label is probably not just a happy coincidence. As a product of the death metal arms race “Designed Obsolescence” sounds like a throwback to the bygone days of 2004-2005 when technical death metal was really taking flight as a genre after the release of “Epitaph” from Necrophagist. In fact Necrophagist would come to define the next decade even if they never came around to releasing that eagerly anticipated third album. Perhaps it is that drives bands like Continuum, the urge to fill that void left by Germany’s last important death metal band. It’s not a bad spot to be in, anyway. With the promotion department of Unique Leader behind them the best is yet to come for Continuum. Here’s hoping they further expand on what they’re pushing here. There’s potential aplenty, for sure.