IMMORTAL — Blizzard Beasts (review)

IMMORTAL — Blizzard Beasts album cover Album · 1997 · Black Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
adg211288
Immortal is a band that won’t ever win any longest running album awards, but the length of Blizzard Beasts, their fourth album is rather pitiful to say the least. Even by Immortal’s standard it’s short. It clocks it at just 28:56, not even a full half hour of music. I have CD’s that are supposed to be only extended plays that are longer than this full length. At least everything else by Immortal clocks in at a time of at least 33:46 (Pure Holocaust).

I am a strong believer in quality over quantity, so what really grates at me is that this isn’t actually that good. Immortal have opted for one of those pointless intro type tracks which just consists of some random noises and Abbath screaming some random words. The first proper song, the title track Blizzard Beasts isn’t anything special either. Mediocre black metal. The same applies for Noctambulant.

Nebular Ravens Winter, Suns that Sank Below and Winter of the Ages are much better though. New drummer Horgh has put a new-found energy into Immortal’s music, and they have found more melody on this album, but for the most part it is just the actually song writing that lets it down when put up against their other releases. There is some lead guitar from Demonaz, which stands out much better than his leads from previous album Battles in the North, as production has been greatly improved here.

Mountains of Might is the best song here, not just because its one of the few that clocks in at over three minutes. But it has some varity aside from full on guitar riffs, and guttural vocals. It has its heavy parts, and its clean tone guitar type parts, which they do vary when they appear. It was one of the only times that I can recalled thinking that growls work over a clean tone.

One thing that I feel the need to make note of is the fact that some songs sound more like death metal than black metal. The song Battlefields is a good example of this. It’s more in Abbath’s vocals than the instrument playing of the three-piece, although it in itself is decidedly different from Blizzard Beasts three predecessors, but runs throughout the album.

Despite some good songs, there’s not much on here that would go well on an Immortal best-of album. Only one song, Mountains of Might would get a guarantied place on such an album, with Nebular Ravens Winter and Winter of the Ages close behind if there was room after their other albums were taken into account. Immortal’s weakest? Yes I think so. Maybe taking that into account it’s a good thing this album is so short, for boredom didn’t really have a chance to set in.
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