Immortal – Sons of Northern Darkness – Review

Immortal

Sons of Northern Darkness (Nuclear Blast)
by Tim Den

The ship of Norwegian vikings Immortal has sailed far indeed. The shores of ye olde days (no bottom end, vacuum cleaner-sounding guitars, mythological ramblings) have long passed out of sight, replaced by endless seas of crystalline aural assaults. No longer messy with their weapons, Immortal now pillage your soul without ever dirtying their hands. No more trashy productions, no more mindless guitar thrashings… instead, devilish blastbeats and brooding chords propel the band like Hades’ winds edging a ghost ship. Gently tracing its fingers down your spine as you sleep. Can you not feel the icy death beckon? Can you not marvel at the gloomy wasteland that their melodies have painted?

Out of the bombastic, cannon-rumble of the riffs, can you not feel the weight of a thousand generation’s worth of shipwrecked corpses on your shoulders? Visions of Antarctica – desolate, breath-taking, humbling, frightening – capsize your sanity as guitarist/vocalist/ship leader Abbath spews forth his clawfingered arpeggios and grinds. The end is near. Your destination, however, will not be Valhalla. Instead, you will be forever trapped in the echoes of Sons of Northern Darkness, eternally damned to witness Immortal’s frozen world.
(2323 W. El Segundo Blvd. Hawthorne, CA 90250)