All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, but Abbath’s been working his corpsepainted arse off and the result is far from a bore. Despite exiting Immortal in messy circumstances - and amid claims from his former bandmates that he’d been “ruining the band’s progress for a very long time” - the Norwegian man-meme has retaliated with an album that is, well, better than anything Immortal have released since ‘At The Heart Of Winter’.
To War!’s sinister, militaristic boot-stomping introduces Abbath’s gnarled sound. It’s a step up from Immortal’s last album, 2009’s ‘All Shall Fall’, with the far-reaching blunder of that release matched with ease and subsequently surpassed. ‘Abbath’ doesn’t mess about. It’s relentless, unyielding black metal that rips through the speaker like a wolf through the chest cavity of a snowman covered in prime-cut steak.
Benighted’s Kevin Foley is key in this, providing the album’s percussive spine. His experience with the French death metallers instils Abbath with a sense of urgency – the album more frantic than trying to go for a piss in a pub on New Year’s Eve when the world is about to end. Full-scale riots have been quieter than the double bass on Fenrir Hunts.
Root Of The Mountain is the only song that’s slower than Usain Bolt racing a cyber-cheetah, but clever variations are sprinkled throughout the rest of the record.
Ashes Of The Damned’s first chorus reveals pompous keys that evoke memories of lo-fi black metal trying to be epic and, given the clean production and terrifying tightness with which Abbath’s band play, they only enhance the brutality. Immortal were always masters of both the grandiose and the grotesque – compare ‘At The Heart Of Winter’ to its follow-up, ‘Damned In Black’ – and Abbath toys with this dichotomy throughout the record.
To defy genre convention is a bit of a no-no in black metal, especially for a figure as prominent as Abbath. So to have the mix set so we can actually hear King Ov Hell’s bass? Well done, gents. Abbath’s vocals are, as always, a Marmite proposition – and it seems they got Sloth from The Goonies to do Count The Dead’s intro – but fans will lap up his frostbitten, croaky tales of mythology and, of course, snow.
Pick one song from ‘Abbath’ and, whichever you choose, it’s better than anything on ‘All Shall Fall’. New blood has been injected and Abbath has released an album that stands as a benchmark not just for black metal in 2016, but extreme music in general. Several tracks swagger with the rock ‘n’ roll confidence of Motörhead. Endless could have been released by a straight-up death metal band. As a whole, it's utterly marvellous.
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