Chicago spent the last few days in the grips of the polar
vortex, and what better time to take in some more of Immortal’s brand of
frosty, frigid Black Metal? Why not make that an extra shot of what is probably
Immortal’s most “Immortal” record, Sons
of Northern Darkness?
Not the best entry in the discography, but pretty close to
it, and certainly the album that most loud and clearly shouts “Immortal,” Sons of Northern Darkness offers 8 songs
in 50 minutes, with most of them being over seven minutes’ run time. The
songwriting dips back into the icy waters of At the Heart of Winter, showcasing once more what happens when the
band comes up with three riffs and employs them all for an extended period of
time. The album also contains the drawn out interlude portion of songs, first
explored on At the Heart of Winter, but
does so to much more effective effect on songs like “Antarctica” and “Beyond
the North Waves”. There is something very atmospheric about this album in its
entirety, that is not found on previous Immortal offerings, which helps this be
perhaps the best listen in the band’s arsenal.
The opening track “One by One” is a solid chugger,
developing into a full gallop around the middle, and the follow up title cut
keeps the pace moving briskly, until the record slams into the glacial groove
of “Tyrants,” which is the end of the evolutionary path begun by the writing on
At the Heart of Winter. Fourth track
“Demonium” kicks the blackened Thrash tempos back up, and then the second half
of the album explores more measured, atmospheric fare.
Everything about this album is intended to inspire feelings
of cold, even the overly blue cover image, and even though the concept may be
somewhat corny, it absolutely works as intended. It further entrenches a
crucial part of Immortal’s ethos as being winter and ice and freezing
conditions, showing that the band had this as their mythos the entire time.
Immortal is occasionally chided as being the Norwegian Black Metal band that
wasn’t following the template, and that’s true. They tried it for a few albums,
and then just went their own way, and it takes an effort as triumphant as Sons of Northern Darkness to make that
visible and clear. It seems that all Immortal had to do to break out was do
what Immortal wanted to do.
The band occupies a strange spot in the Norwegian Black
Metal pantheon, being contemporaries of the true gods but sonically different;
not different like Enslaved, not Black Metal like Emperor, Immortal is probably
the Exodus of the Norwegian Black Metal scene. They’ve been there; they’re
originators; but they are not the band you think of when you think of this
genre, and it’s because they are not really attached to the genre musically.
Sure, corpse paint and imagery and content, all competently and even expertly
doled out, but “Black Metal” often seems too weighty a tag for this band. More
a Thrash band playing in the Black Metal sandbox, I think. Nothing wrong there,
but when this band felt themselves shifting creatively, they, like Emperor and
Enslaved, went where they felt drawn, not where they felt like they were
“supposed” to go, and as a result, we got something new and good.
Ironically, Sons of
Northern Darkness would be the last Immortal album before something of a
hiatus, with Abbath going to write a great and underappreciated album for the
kind of poorly named I, and creative mainstay Demonaz going to write an album
for the band that simply bears his name, which isn’t bad but is kind of by the
numbers. The band will reconvene in a few years, but one has to think they
sacrificed a good deal of momentum from this album by doing solo work. A
personnel shake up also happened, and this would be the beginnings of some
on-going legal issues concerning the band name and logo, and both of the
alluded to solo albums have quality material on them, but one has to wonder
what the band could have done had they just gone to frozen ground and continued
what they’d begun on here.
Sons of Northern
Darkness is a terrific record, and the one Immortal over all others that I
reach for when I’m in the mood for an auditory temperature drop. I know that
this band isn’t for everyone, and at this point in their career for sure, but
this record is an absolute masterpiece of early- to mid-2000’s extreme music,
and deserves to be heard by everyone.
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