Blizzard Beasts [Import]

Immortal | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 20, 1998)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: TDNE
• ASIN: B000007WOL
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #64,316 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Frostdemonstorm, January 13, 2005

By 

Patrick Stott (Rolleston, Canterbury, New Zealand) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blizzard Beasts (Audio CD)

Black Metal has proved to be an enigmatic music form over the past two decades, constantly being redefined and recreated, while progressing little from the original blueprint. The genre's beauty and brutality make uneasy partners, and often multi-instrumentalism creates the former, which can detract from the latter. Immortal however, use aggression to generate the atmosphere on `Blizzard Beasts', rejecting subtlety and embracing ferocity.

The sound on `Blizzard Beasts' is understated rather than the usual necro Black Metal low fidelity buzz. The vocals are buried deep, little more than a whisper over the raging Metal maelstrom. The band's initial impact harkens to a less technical Morbid Angel, and second track "Nebular Ravens Winter" revisits Morbid Angel's "Maze Of Torment" in it's blast sections. The Morbid Angel reference is only fleeting, but it appears more than once, reoccurring on "Battlefields". That's not to say Immortal did not have their own sound - far from it. In places, there is a groove of sorts, and the band was a lot heavier than their peers in a traditional Metal sense. While Darkthrone and Mayhem stripped their sound of bass, Immortal weren't afraid of a bit of bottom end.

Demonaz's guitars are the most outstanding feature of the album, all razor sharp rawness and spiky riffs. This is the final Immortal album Demonaz performed on, retiring from playing music due to a repetitive strain injury. Listening to his playing, the injury is no surprise. "Suns That Sank Below" is all cascading riffs and crashing percussion. In fact, Demonaz never seems to let up, knowing only one speed to play - flat out. The song even features a short solo, played at breakneck speed of course, and is well buried under Horgh's relentless percussion.

Horgh himself is a corpse painted, bullet belted, beer gutted wrecking machine. Laugh at the man's image and appearance all you like, but don't ever question his ability. Want to hear some of the hardest hitting Black Metal drumming you'll ever hear? Try "Winter Of The Ages", where the percussion simply lays waste to all else.

"Mountains Of Might" is a slight change of pace, providing an atmospheric introduction followed by a more traditional Metal song, with reasonably well defined riffs, and Abbath speaking rather than screaming. A semi-acoustic mid section proved the band could do more than just play fast, and even though the overall tempo is still rapid, it is slower than the tracks surrounding it. The sound is icy and bare, and clocking in at over six and a half minutes, "Mountains Of Might" has almost an epic feel to it. Almost.

Abbath's demonic croak is early Quorthon all over. Many passages of the album sound Bathory-esque, but at the same time the vocals sound almost chillingly unhuman.

While the moments of subtlety are few and far between, they provide enough contrast on this album to break up what could have been a monotonous half hour long blast beat. Immortal was never a band for delicacy and finesse, and fans wouldn't expect any. Sure, it's far from original, but so what? `Blizzard Beasts' is brutal, fast and unrelenting. That's what Immortal did so well.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cold... Dark... Blizzard Beasts., April 23, 2005

By 

Metal_fan - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blizzard Beasts (Audio CD)

This album marks the end of the "old" Immortal sound (and logo) and this album is the best of the old Immortal albums. In fact, I think this hits "Pure Holocaust" right out of the game, in terms of sheer speed, power, and coldness. The riffs are bleak and frosty,as if you recorded them in a blizzard. The Lyrics are buried underneath the mix, for the most part, which gives a sense of Abbath being stuck in a blizzard, yelling war cries. Horgh, though, is the best drummer Immortal had. His unrelentless pounding on the kit blows all others away. And Demonaz's guitar, in addition to being cold as ice, are also FAST!!! This dude must burn through three picks a day, because his playing is faster than hell.

What I don't understand, though, is why everybody thinks "Pure Holocaust" is so good. I think this and "Battles In The North" beat "Holocaust" by a bunch. Of the old albums, this one takes the frostbitten cake, because this just has that cold, hateful atmosphere that their first two albums lack. The main problem with "Holocaust" and "DFM" is that the guitars are too warm. On Battles in the North and Blizzard Beasts, the guitars are icy cold. And that doesn't change, as they keep on telling tales of Blashrykh (or however you spell it). However, if you're new to Immortal, I would't reccommend this album. It's not catchy, it's not meant to be. I would reccommend "Sons of Northern Darkness" as the first album instead, just because that album is much more accessible. However, if you have SOND or Damned in Black or At the Heart of Winter, this is your step into the old Immortal sound. However, if you are already into cold black metal, this should be no problem.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This one is, well, a "Beast", January 21, 2008

By 

A. Stutheit "Teyad" (Denver, CO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blizzard Beasts (Audio CD)

Aside from its two founding members, Abbath and Demonaz, Immortal just couldn't seem to maintain a steady lineup early on. In fact, this was the case all the way up until 1996 (seven years after the band's inception!). Fortunately, they then found a little drummer extraordinaire by the name of Reidar Horghagen (you know him better simply as Horgh), and things only went uphill from there. And yes, granted, 1997's "Blizzard Beasts" added little innovation to the band's sound, and it does have a flat production job and really short running time (at 28 minutes, it's about as long as the average EP). But to this reviewer's ears, "Blizzard Beasts" has aged surprisingly well, because it has proven to be a worthy progression from `95's "Battles in the North," as well as an invigorating listen, and an extremely caustic album that is filled with stellar musicianship. Stylistically, Immortal's core sound (classic black metal) remains in tact, but this album also fuses in strong American death metal and German thrash influences. So, in other words, it sounds like Immortal meets Morbid Angel by way of Sodom/Kreator.

"Mountains of Might" is the album's clear highpoint, as it is a very dark, frigidly cold, and brilliantly majestic and ambient, six-and-a-half-minute-long epic that foretells of the kind of direction Immortal would take on subsequent releases (i.e. 1999's "At the Heart of Winter"). It begins with almost a minute worth of nice, eerie, symphonic keyboards from Abbath, and even though the rest of the band then storm on with fiery guitars and pounding drums, the song remains somewhat restrained throughout (it's still plenty fast, but compared to the rest of the songs, it's fairly slow.) Meanwhile, Abbath puts his typical shrieking/yelling on the back burner in favor of freakish spoken-word vocals that tell chillingly poetic lyrics. "Mountains of Might" flirts with melody, too, because it also features two pretty, tranquil bridges. "Winter of the Ages," with its great, fiery, machine gun riffs, equally as brutal drumming, well-placed keyboard touches, and fairly long, shredding solo, and "Suns That Sank Below," which is all circular, crunching, cascading riffs and crashing percussion, are to other big standouts on hand here. And elsewhere, more familiar tracks like the title cut, the Mayhem-esque "Nebular Ravens Winter" and "Frostdemonstorm" are all completely blown out black metal hurricanes of impossibly tight interplay between the retching, frog-throated rasps, great, razor-sharp, smoke-inducing buzzsaw riffs (which evoke vintage Morbid Angel, circa 1989's "Altars of Madness"), and Horgh's amazing, hyperspeed, skull-splitting blast beats.

"Blizzard Beasts" is a very good, yet very overlooked and underrated, album from Immortal, and it should be considered a great transitional album for the band (since it does show their sound evolving a little). In the grand scheme of things, "BB" is not essential listening, but it is certainly well-done enough to be recommended for all diehard fans of brutal black metal.