Immortal - At the Heart of Winter (Black Metal)

Immortal are an oddity in the black metal world in regards to their audience. They found a great deal of success playing conventional Bathory meets Burzum black metal with Marduk overtones (triggered drums included) and then "progressed" into a modern heavy metal band, all under the pretence of playing "extreme" music. Really, their songs were - unlike that of their mentors Bathory and Burzum - a disorganised pile of parts that never gelled together, and this album At the Heart of Winter is no different in that regard. The main difference here is the more "mature" presentation - relative to their modern "extreme metal" peers - and the expanded repertoire of styles that run amok on the album.

On At the Heart of Winter, Abbath finally does what he should have done since the days of Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism, and kicks out the useless Demonaz while dropping the pretence of playing black metal altogether, to embrace what is essentially a Motörhead meets Iron Maiden candy metal album. Unburdened by the out-of-place black metal elements of Pure Holocaust and Battles in the North, it is also Immortal's "best" - least boring - release, before the band devolve into Dimmu Borgir metalcore.

While this album might have some (not even a lot) of the established tropes of black metal: raspy vocals, heavy distortion, tremolo riffs and blast beats, At the Heart of Winter is in actuality much closer to Dissection than black metal, who in and of themselves are much closer to rock music than extreme metal in the first place. So, in short, what At the Heart of Winter really is at the basest level is a rock album, with "extreme metal" stylings to keep their "street-cred" amongst the morons.

Still, it's Immortal "best" album - likely due to the absence of incestuous poser Demonaz - and a progression from the disorganised mess that made Immortal "famous" in the black metal underground. While not as actively offensive as Gorgoroth's crypto-nu-metal, I still wouldn't recommend this album At the Heart of Winter to anybody. If you want some real bone-chilling black metal, listen to Neraines' Fenrir Prowling and avoid Immortal and other "comedy" bands that cheapen the genre both by their imagery and by their music.