Immortal - At the Heart of Winter (1999)Release ID: 568
Wow! I know I’m in a crazy minority here, but I actually thought “Blizzard Beasts” was going to end up my favorite Immortal album. The way Immortal integrated twisted Death Metal riffs and more varied drumming into their wintry 2nd wave Black Metal formula worked very well for me. I was expecting a return to regular Black Metal with this album.
But no! They learned something very important from the last album! Which is how to write incredible riffs! As far as Black Metal goes, these are some of the best riffs in the genre. Melodic yet raw, aggressive and thrashy but still unmistakably cold. This is still 2nd wave Black Metal at its core, but this time, instead of Death Metal influence, they’ve injected their wintry hellscape with Melodic Black Metal and Thrash influence. Somewhat opposing forces, but it all comes together so well here!
The leads sit in this perfect purgatory between melodic and twisted, they are very memorable and full of impressive lead work a la Meloblack, but they are evil, destructive, and almost out of control a la Thrash! The drumming is in a similar place, where it is much more controlled and willing to run in non-blast beat territory, bordering on progressive at times. However, it never loses sight of being a mad, combative beast of rhythm.
Production is also quite good for this genre. Clear enough, mixed well, sounds good, but not overproduced. Plainly, the album doesn’t have any flaws, and is a masterpiece among the genre.
Traditional black metal, founded by Mayhem, has been a staple of Norwegian music since its inception, and along with it will always be the bands associated with the early scene. Even though Mayhem fell out of favor once their frontman Euronymous was murdered by Burzum, and Emperor called it quits, Immortal has still been going strong, and their most classic album remains a contender by many to be the greatest black metal album in the world: At the Heart of Winter. This album did so much for the traditional black metal sound that it has many emulators, and is more accessible like Death's Symbolic, so it makes it good entry for new black metal explorers. It was mine.
At the Heart of Winter immediately lets you know that it's an "epic" album, telling a fantasy tale through rhyme and riff. So even though it behaves like a metal opera occasionally, it has none of the symphony of genres more associated with it, handling itself like a concept album about a place build for metal operas. The album has no trouble drawing the listener away into the world of Blashyrkh, using clear vocals to immediately suck you into the gothic poetry. The album's riffs keep coming and coming, and usually the album finds something new to give you but handles all the riffs in somewhat progressive manners.
Unfortunately, its run of tracks 2-4 are pretty much going for the same sound, and the longest of these three, track 3, is the least imaginitive. So its awesome sound draws out a little bit before it gives you a few new ideas in between its two final tracks, which help justify the album again.
This is Immortal at their best. They're a black metal band for hard rock fans, and their straightforward sound is almost mastered here. A the Heart of Winter is the first album I'd recommend any newcomer to black metal (unless they're experimental fans, in which case it would be something else).
Better Production Values, Still Got It
I'm not a fan of too much production value in my Black Metal. I want it to sound like they picked up their microphones and instruments out of the trash and recorded by playing back to a tape from a static filled amp. This isn't quite that, they found a bit of money to find decent guitars and an actual recording studio. This is still pretty good. I first listened to this album while on a mountain hike in the middle of winter with snow falling all around me. Fit perfectly, if only their was a bit more static involved to feel like the snow really hitting me with enthusiasm.
This is a great album. Immortal still has it into their 5th album and 10 years. They're such a uniquely sounding black metal band, that although they're are black metal through and through you can still hear the melodic tones in this one. I love melodic death metal a lot and though, as I stated earlier, I prefer the low-fi production for my black metal it works really well here. The melodic death metal is a change of pace that I welcome. The melody isn't progressive, it's not trying something new to take you somewhere else, it implants you right where you're sitting and puts you into a mesmerized state that you just want to sit back and enjoy. It takes away the atmospheric elements of nature or symphonic elements of horns and string instrumentation and just lets the guitar alone do it's thing to create a soundscape to fall into.
This is a definitive change of pace for Immortal that I haven't heard before from them or really since. Very unique album along my black metal library that I will be returning back to for more melody that I didn't know I needed.
Listen back to "Pure Holocaust" or "Battles In The North" and you simply cannot deny the cold, harsh and blistering fury of the pace across those records. Relentlessly executed and delivered with real venom each time, they are quite rightly bona fide classics in any BM collection. What "At The Heart Of Winter" brought was a less frenzied, much more calculated assault. With it's immediate use of melody from virtually the word go (check out album opener "Withstand The Fall Of Time" from about 3 mins in for 30 seconds or so as a fine example of how things were going to pan out on this record), measured perfectly by those awesome riffs and thunder toms, man!
This was never a case of Immortal wimping (or selling) out. This album was a point in time for Immortal and at that point they were at the top of their game not just musically but also in the quality of the songwriting. Each track is an epic foray into Abbaths' nightmarish, frozen world only this time there is no searing, ice-cold wind stinging your eyes; instead you have Immortal as the fiery dragon scorching out of the blueish haze, standing proud and stoic over their realm.
The pace isn't doom by any stretch and that is one of the key successes of this album. It might be a change of sound but it is still so very obviously Immortal, Abbath is unmistakeable in his vocal delivery but this time the band are building structures around them. Take second track "Solarfall" and listen as it swoops in and out of fast paced riffs and more melodic passages that help build the imagery behind the song title brilliantly. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the "Tragedies Blows At Horizons", with it's measured development and well reined pace punctuated superbly by dreamy plucked strings and big, bold and plodding riffs.
Of course I am going to mention the artwork too. It's up there with Emperor "In The Nightside Eclipse" in terms of epic, fantasy artwork doing great justice to what lies beneath. It is one of those records that if ever owned on vinyl I could sit gawking at the cover for hours.
By the time you get to the oddly titled "Where Dark & Light Don't Differ" the sense of controlled aggression is all the more evident here with the thrashing riffs and astonishing drum work of Horgh combining perfectly.
If you haven't figured out by now that the title track is going to be awesome then its opening foray of picked strings and haunting keys should be enough of a wake up call. It is a whole 2 minutes before that riff crashes in and Abbath's grim croak establishes itself. Again there is variety galore in terms of riffs, melody and drums on this one track alone. The track gallops along with riffs leaving horseshoe imprints on your forehead as the mighty Immortal beast thunders on.
By the time you reach "Years Of Silent Sorrow" you are still just as exhausted as you were at the end of "Pure Holocaust". Only this time your Immortalised brain has had to come to terms with a melodic style of BM that retains all the harsh, cold and scathing darkness of the genre yet it has been somehow packaged in a solid structure of accessible and thoughtful songwriting.
