“For he must reign, till he hath put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be abolished is death.” So be it, and thusly Immortal was raised from the dead. Taking blasphemous usage of the bible aside it is somewhat amusing as well as perhaps predictable that Immortal did live up to their name by splitting up and getting back together a few years later. You cannot deny the fact that it did them the world of good either. If someone had told me that the band that had just about managed to almost fill The Underworld in London were a few years later going to have been headlining Wacken Open Air, I would have laughed so hard I may well have turned into a pillar of salt. But that is exactly what happened and now seven years after ‘Sons Of Northern Darkness’ the frosty ones from Blashyrkh are back (in black) with new album ‘All Shall Fall.”
Looking back on the early black metal documentaries, where a bunch of kids were starting out and were played by the cameras into making somewhat idiotic comments, even more idiotic videos, one would probably not have thought that this was a band that would ever come of age. Indeed getting around the fact that as far as being in front of the camera is concerned and that indeed every photo looks better with Immortal inserted hilariously in it, not much has changed, the band did with their last couple of albums before the split mature. This is something that is apparent in the continuation after the resurrection with ‘All Shall Fall’ containing the best parts of the last couple of discs and the stop gap album that was not Immortal but ‘I’ courtesy of Abbath and friends, ‘Between Two Worlds.’
The new album features seven tracks that although not epic, retains much of the grim days of yore. Starting with the title track, the unholy trinity of Abbath, Apollyon and Horgh quickly plunge us into their freezing, nebular world with glistening icy guitar raptures and cataclysmic avalanche fuelled drum rolls. The melody here is fantastic as are the singer’s vocals, let’s face it nobody quite rasps like Abbath and although I never thought I would say this, listening to it today its good to hear him back. Slowing for an acoustic mid-section, voices come out of chasms and ricochet off glaciers before the track plunges back in ‘majestically’ and this is a word that keeps cropping up whilst listening to the album and sums it up magnanimously.
Lyrically this is of course good old fashioned tosh of the highest order and we would have it no other way. To quote ‘The Rise Of Darkness’ “Demonic in this realm, I haunt marked by the sign. Caught between mighty winds. Kingdom of evil find.” Pure potty poetry of the highest order. I cannot quite make it out but could swear the last few vocal lines on this particular number as it fades out are played backwards too. No obvious clashing of swords or sounds of battle but there are some horses racing off before ‘Norden On Fire’ blazes in with some of the best melody lines I have heard in a while providing the mighty swagger behind it. I think another reason this succeeds is due to the simplicity of it, this is not highly technical or anything, nor is it too extreme, in fact it is at times pretty damn accessible. There is nothing really challenging about this but there are plenty of moments that you can deliriously head-bang along to or play air guitar (or even air rasping) to with wild abandon. What’s not to enjoy?
I went into this in a bit of a cynical fashion I admit. There are and have been so many good black metal releases this year and I expected this to be a bunch that I always considered a bit overrated in the first place simply re-hashing past glories. So I am pleased that I ended up really enjoying this frozen fetid blast of Northern grimnity. I used to put ‘Blizzard Beasts’ or ‘Sons Of Northern Darkness’ on every time there was a possibility of snow and they always seemed to work at bringing it down. Looking out the window whilst writing this, the weather may not have reacted but they just evacuated 500 people from the head office of the large company across the road. Immortal the power and the glory, forever and ever!
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