IMMORTAL - Sons Of Northern Darkness
April 5, 2002, 22 years ago
(Nuclear Blast)
Specifically, Immortal are proving to be the shining example of a black metal band that triumphs through nothing more but way better riffs and songs (with the production to run you through like a lance). I say nothing more, because others receive and deserve accolades by getting highly creative and artistic, progressive or traditional or impossibly fast and note-dense or non-metal or whacked; many ways to assemble great music along the octet of spokes meeting at the black metal hub. But Immortal have done it with traditional tooling, finding with unwavering stare, care and attention, riffs like that strafing opener 'One By One', or the tragic slog of 'Tyrants', or the godly speed-snare punctuations of the title track. 1,2,3... this has got to be the most regal and triumphant opening trio of songs in the entire corpsepaint gallery of rogues. And somehow, the original wintery mystique of the scene is there, embedded in those razor-sharp guitars, the dead-serious vocals, the electrocuted wall of drums. It's all grim but victorious (with hints of lonely Bathory, oddly), and already, folks are debating whether and frankly confused about if Sons Of Northern Darkness relates closest to early Immortal or mid. Suffice to say that it succeeds like the brash best of the future with all the bleak frozen emotion of black metal's mid-'90s, with a formula as old as The Beatles, meaning, find the golden songs.
