Immortal

Pure Holocaust (1993)

Like a raging blizzard Pure Holocaust mesmerises with its sheer force. Intricate melodic patterns rip through your soul, as if you were surrounded by this white death, with drums pounding through your mind, both a calming influence with their sheer ambient thunder and a source of fear through their unremitting power. The feral spirit of nature is drawn into a geometrically moving architecture by Immortal, stacking it with conflict and tension and sweeping, adaptive song-structures, which are infused with a spirit that revives man's lost link with the elemental destiny of his existence. It's all so cold and dare I say it "frost bitten", like ancient snow drifts hidden over time have been re-summoned and invigorated with the force of the Gods. The body is trapped and frozen in time, but the snow surrounds, and moves over vast landscapes, acting as a conduit to the spirit-world.

Blizzard Beasts (1997)

Immortal in their early span of albums were a band that always re-invented their style. The only real given from album to album was that it would consist of frost-bitten riffing. Blizzard Beasts is probably the closest that any of the Norse-themed Black Metal bands from the inner circle got to playing blackened Death Metal (excluding the early demo bands), especially of the kind that was influenced by the Slayer / Morbid Angel way of doing things.  Whilst Immortal do possess the rhythmic intensity, and Speed/Thrash Metal influence of the Florida scene,  there is very apparent difference in the feel of their music. The trademark frozen sound of Immortal is far away from the fiery sound straight from the morbid depths of hell found in most Death Metal.

Compared to Battles of the North, Immortal has also changed up their production style and general approach. The sound here is more abrasive, and less like the noisy melodic war-like battery found on its predecessor. The drumming is more refined (and further back in the mix) and much less akin to ferocious blast beat attacks. The riffing style is also more jagged, abrupt and often unpredictable in terms of its rhythm attack - it does not have as much of a sense of melodic fluidity compared to the previous two albums. There is also a density to the music that is different to that of Battles of the North – not so due to the much volume of noise and cluttered production, but because there is more complexity to the rhythm section and use of different kinds of chords and muted notes. It just oozes that hard 'crystal' vibe that ice possesses. In other words it is less like a giant blizzard swirling around you and more like a huge mountain of ice, with jagged edges and impenetrable walls. The album does still have those cold, dark tremolo riffs that Immortal made distinctly their own, especially on Pure Holocaust, but they appear less frequently in a lot of the songs and are used more as a sense of contrast or tempo change, rather than a vessel for carrying the writing. In their place there is much more Thrash Metal inspired palm-muting and faster Death Metal type riffing, with stuttering or angular rhythms and tempo changes. 

Immortal’s music, outside of the costumes and accompanying art-work that went with it (whether you think they are silly or some kind of pagan war symbolism is besides the point), has always retained a kind of natural purity and remained free of the (anti-)religious or political aims of many other bands. They were more akin to create songs about the lands of the Northern Realms, treacherous and inhospitable to all but the strongest willed people. This is no different - it does not have a warm, inviting feeling at all, in fact it is fairly desolate, and for a lot of people mostly devoid of feeling, but for those who want to brave the colder side of this band, it is a fairly consistent experience throughout.