Mass Burial: Immortal, The Seventh Date of Blashrykh

Ah, the live album. An opportunity to relive a concert, or to experience one vicariously. A chance to assemble a “greatest hits” type package including all of the intensity and spectacle of the live setting. Usually, live albums are very hit-or-miss, dependent on ones’ enthusiasm for a band and the selectin of songs being performed. Personally, I like live albums quite a bit, although my hunger for them ebbs and flows. The Seventh Date of Blashrykh should have been a hit, as it depicts Immortal playing a true selection of hits with an emphasis on tunes from Sons of Northern Darkness, which I would argue is the bands’ high water point. But man, I really hate this album.

Eleven songs of excellent vintage, Immortal hits at least the memorable track from every album in their catalog, to that point in time, EXCEPT Blizzard Beasts. Really? “Mountains of Might” and “Nebular Ravens Winter” weren’t good enough to make the setlist? Anyway, the song selection really is great, a veritable list of classic jams. The sound quality is great, the band hitting with a real ferocity that can be felt, it comes across so clearly in the mix. The vocals may be a little bit low which makes you have to pay attention to Abbath much of the time.

But the problem with this album, for me at least, is the two-fold. First, the stage banter is pretty lame. It’s the usual stuff, Abbath leaning into his mic and asking generic concert crowd questions liberally punctuated with “fuck”s. “Are you fuckers fucking ready??” “How are you fuckers doing tonight?” That sort of thing. Not offensive, like I’m not appalled by the use of profanity, but pretty bland and stock. I suppose that, to some very real extent, I’ve just been spoiled over the years by Motorhead live records and Lemmy’s real quality banter. Maybe I expect too much. But even if I’m at a concert, I enjoy some stage banter, as long as it’s done well and doesn’t trend towards excess or overstay its welcome. Abbath’s banter is functional, but I guess, since he is something of a character and gives what I’d call excellent and engaging interviews, I was left wanting.

The other issue is one of pacing, and I cannot understand why the band does this. A few minutes into the opening song of the show, “The Sun No Longer Rises” from the outstanding Pure Holocaust, the band takes a full stop break for like fifteen or twenty seconds. A full stop. In the middle of their opening number. Why? When bands do this, as they often do, it’s often a cue for the audience to make a lot of noise, the ol’ “Are you out there? We can’t here you” bit. But there’s nothing more than general cheering during this break, which is something of an indication that there’s nothing happening at the show, no pyro or video or on-stage shenanigans, to warrant this pause. And, if that’s not dumb enough, they do it AGAIN, three songs later, during “Tyrants,” from Sons of Northern Darkness, the album for which this concert was held. So twice within the first twenty or twenty-five minutes of the set, the bad pauses during a song, for no discernable reason.

Oh, right. There’s also a time or two where the guitars and vocals cut out, leaving only the drums and bass to keep plugging along for what feels like an eternity of song time.

The set itself was recorded at the legendary Wacken Open Air festival in 2007, and the physical release of this contains a DVD of the set, which could alleviate a bunch of the dullness of the audio-only version. I don’t have the DVD, as my consumption of this record came via Apple Music, but you know, I’m not sold on the idea that the video component could have made a positive impact. And it really shouldn’t need to, since this recording IS the show on the DVD. While a concert is absolutely a multimedia experience, stripping it down to only one medium shouldn’t cancel out the kinds of issues I’ve had with the listen. Maybe there was a stage show happening during those too-long pauses that makes them functional and good instead of dead air, but I can’t tell.

Can I just take this moment to say that Wacken remains a thing on my Bucket List? At 40, I think that the window for it may be almost closed, since the lineup would probably contain a number of bands I don’t know alongside what would almost certainly be considered nostalgia sets from the bands I did know, but the landmark concert has been a permanent fixture on said list since I first learned of it when I was living in Germany.  

I said that I hated this album, and that’s a real strong reaction to music. I hate that this is such a bland show, despite having such an amazing setlist. I hate that it feels so stock. The performances are so true to the original recordings that I’m not sure why this is a better option than making a playlist of the songs from their studio releases and then just listening to that instead. (I recently made a playlist in Apple Music for the first time EVER, so now I’m like Mr. Playlist. –mr) The songs aren’t even the beneficiaries of the live settings’ general condition of being played faster or more intense, as Immortal has always managed both of those values on their studio albums quite excellently. And only the tracks from At the Heart of Winter would have any atmospheric components to replicate, and frankly they sound like they do that just fine. Not as atmospheric as their original forms, but perfectly fine. I’m not sure why you’d grab this album instead of the aforementioned playlist.

So I don’t really hate this, I just don’t see the need. Live albums often, if you’re in to them, do provide something new or different: new takes on old classics or extended solos or something. The Seventh Date of Blashrykh doesn’t. The best thing about it is that it finally, FINALLY, gives us a correct pronunciation for Blashrykh  (“Blash-rick”), which is a lot more of a positive than I think I can really express here. A fine record, but unnecessary and uninteresting.