Immortal
Blizzard Beasts
[Osmose]
After the aggressive as hell "Battles in the North", Immortal return with an effort that will divide their fans into 2 categories: those who will love it & those who will hate it. Personally, I'm somewhere in the middle.
After a pretty useless intro, the album blasts off with the title track "Blizzard Beasts". And yes...it's Immortal, typical as ever ; Demonaz' maniacal guitar-work, Abbath's well-known vocals (somewhere between a rasp, a grunt & Donald Duck) and furious blast-beat drumming courtesy of Horgh, the latter being a newcomer. To our great relief, the lyrics are still dealing with the good ol' winternebularravenbattlemightnorthstorms and Blashyrkh. The song is fucking brutal and not bad at all, but due to a surprisingly weak & sterile sound-quality, the song looses some of its strength. The weak sound plagues the entire album which is a disappointment, since on their previous works, Immortal have had pretty decent sound.
Anyway, back to the album, "Nebular Ravens Winter" follows and is undoubtedly one of the better songs on the album. I would especially note Demonaz' interesting guitar-work on this one.
Some uninteresting tracks follow that don't catch my attention in any way whatsoever until one of Immortal's greatest songs ever blasts through my ears and teleports me right into the middle of snowstorms raging through Norwegian valleys. "Mountains of Might" is its name and what a fucking brilliant song it is! It begins with an AMAZING synth-intro of SUCH nostalgia... words cannot describe it. After one minute, the song blasts off and every damn riff is simply breathtaking. An excellent chorus combined with brilliant, technical riffs and freezing interludes catapult this song right up into the Immortal hall of fame. Stunning and truly majestic!
Unfortunately, the songs that follow don't come even close to matching "Mountains of Might" in any way. I'd pretty much say that the aforementioned song saves this album. The last song ,"Frostdemonstorms" is an other pretty good display of the good ol' Immortal winter-hybrid and again shows that this album definitely had the potential of becoming something great, had the sound not been so weak.
Overall, "Blizzard Beasts" is an album that certainly deserves to be heard since this is definitely Immortal as we know it.
And ofcourse (maybe also somewhat ironically) one of Immortal's greatest songs appears on this album carrying the frostbitten name of "Mountains of Might". The song alone strengthens this album quite a bit.
Thus, this album is good and not far way from being great had the sound been better and some of the useless, boring songs removed.
7.5/10
© 2000 naargrim
After a pretty useless intro, the album blasts off with the title track "Blizzard Beasts". And yes...it's Immortal, typical as ever ; Demonaz' maniacal guitar-work, Abbath's well-known vocals (somewhere between a rasp, a grunt & Donald Duck) and furious blast-beat drumming courtesy of Horgh, the latter being a newcomer. To our great relief, the lyrics are still dealing with the good ol' winternebularravenbattlemightnorthstorms and Blashyrkh. The song is fucking brutal and not bad at all, but due to a surprisingly weak & sterile sound-quality, the song looses some of its strength. The weak sound plagues the entire album which is a disappointment, since on their previous works, Immortal have had pretty decent sound.
Anyway, back to the album, "Nebular Ravens Winter" follows and is undoubtedly one of the better songs on the album. I would especially note Demonaz' interesting guitar-work on this one.
Some uninteresting tracks follow that don't catch my attention in any way whatsoever until one of Immortal's greatest songs ever blasts through my ears and teleports me right into the middle of snowstorms raging through Norwegian valleys. "Mountains of Might" is its name and what a fucking brilliant song it is! It begins with an AMAZING synth-intro of SUCH nostalgia... words cannot describe it. After one minute, the song blasts off and every damn riff is simply breathtaking. An excellent chorus combined with brilliant, technical riffs and freezing interludes catapult this song right up into the Immortal hall of fame. Stunning and truly majestic!
Unfortunately, the songs that follow don't come even close to matching "Mountains of Might" in any way. I'd pretty much say that the aforementioned song saves this album. The last song ,"Frostdemonstorms" is an other pretty good display of the good ol' Immortal winter-hybrid and again shows that this album definitely had the potential of becoming something great, had the sound not been so weak.
Overall, "Blizzard Beasts" is an album that certainly deserves to be heard since this is definitely Immortal as we know it.
And ofcourse (maybe also somewhat ironically) one of Immortal's greatest songs appears on this album carrying the frostbitten name of "Mountains of Might". The song alone strengthens this album quite a bit.
Thus, this album is good and not far way from being great had the sound been better and some of the useless, boring songs removed.
7.5/10
© 2000 naargrim