Immortal – "War Against All"

Not the Immortal we wanted, but the one we deserve...?

Up until a certain amount of years ago, depending on where you stop counting, Immortal is one of sadly few black metal bands that kept on getting better by the album, their career culminating with the 2009 near-masterpiece "All Shall Fall". Then, of course, came those legal disputes ("Battles in the Court", anyone?), and Abbath quit in 2015.

So I didn't bother with their 2018 effort "Northern Chaos Gods". And now, Horgh left last year, leaving Demonaz as the proverbial last man standing. So with ridiculous turns of events like those, maybe I shouldn't bother with an album like "War Against All". But I'm glad I did anyway. Because what we're dealing with here is classic, frostbitten Immortal.

The opening title track is a freezing, tensely dissonant blast blitz like you might expect. I'm missing those signature angry Popeye vocals of Abbath, but Demonaz' guttural scream is still as loveably inhuman as anyone could expect from the genre. Thrash-paced follower "Thunders of Darkness" features an almost Morbid Angel-like death riff in between those cold treble chord sections, segueing into a break section of almost fist-pumper qualities.

In a nutshell, Demonaz' songwriting is just plain hella effective. Just like his guiding beacons in Motörhead and KISS, the man has a strong sense of combining simple elements into results that transcend the sum of their parts. There's some nice variation with the slow, heavy "Wargod", its mid-section built on a cadence reminiscent of the mid-section in Iron Maiden's "Where Eagles Dare". Also the epic "No Sun" features some yummy blasting and tremolo riffing flanking an otherwise straightforward, almost rock-like chugging triplet feel.

Maybe I shouldn't bother with an album like "War Against All". But I'm glad I did anyway. Because what we're dealing with here is classic, frostbitten Immortal.

A general issue, if any, is that Demonaz ends up relying too much on pure, melodic, minor-key themes and cadences over straight-up rock drives like that. Hell, a lot of the material here could very well be called heavy metal, but just featuring an ice demon on vocals. And there's nothing wrong with that in and by itself, but it could easily be much more profane. On side 2, as it were, I'm starting to miss some of that ugly hostility from the band's '90s albums. Even with only 8 songs and a collective playing time of 38 minutes, the variations are a bit too few. The 7-minute instrumental "Nordlandihr" ends up meandering.

All else being equal, though, the concluding "Blashyrkh My Throne" (yeah, he's still on about that Blashyrkh thing) sums up the album pretty well: It's largely in a pure minor key and a simple, straightforward mid-tempo pace, but at the same time, it still has that unmistakably evil and epic spirit that ended up setting Immortal apart from all those lo-fi colleagues of theirs back in the day. And among those black metal fans who are all about being as lo-fi and dissonant as possible, and who started writing off Immortal around "Sons of Northern Darkness" (2002), this album will not have much success.

However, for those of us who consider music more than metal just as much as we consider metal more than music, "War Against All" counts as a worthy effort. It's far from the best Immortal album, but given the circumstances, we can't expect much more than this. And there's still enough to appreciate.

Rating: 4.5 out of 6

Genre: Black metal
Release date: 26/5/2023
Label: Nuclear Blast
Producer: Arve Isdal