Customer Reviews

Blizzard Beasts

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Although I personally think that this cd isn't quite as good as some of Immortal's other albums, it certainly isn't a bad cd by any means. The songs create an icy winter atmosphere in which the vocals and instruments rage on until around the middle of the song and then they go into these awesome instrumental pieces that really make you feel like your out in blizzard. The quality and production isn't fantastic but its better than some of their first albums. Overall, if your a fan of Immortal then this cd is a must have, but if your just getting into them then I would recommend one of their other cds instead.

One better get their cd or else things
change and music such as this will be gone
forever. News:Immortal has broken up,
and this is legit from there website.
Blizzard beasts is a great album with
super beats. This album beats alot of rock
albums out there, and metal bands.
so get this while this is available.
The drumming of horgh and the razor guitar
of demonaz is legendary.

This is basically a Morbid Angel CD played at double speed...

"Blizzard Beasts" is sort of a "transitional" CD for Immortal, combining the cold, frosty old-school black metal sound of "Battles in the North" and "Pure Holocaust" with the more crunchy well-produced death metal sound of later CD's as "At the heart of winter" and "Damned in black"

Maybe "black metal puritans" will prefer the earlier CD's and new fans of Immortal prefer the new more polished, mid-tempo approach, but I think "Blizzard Beasts" is the perfect mix of the two, and therefore Immortal's best album in my oppinion..

The almost Fields of the Nephilim sounding track "Mountains of might" is the album's highpoint, although it is the least representative, because the rest of the tracks are played at breakneck speeds!!

Credit has to go to new drummer Horgh for his incredible stamina and energy, which seem to charge up the rest of the band.

Being a fan of black/ thrash metal primarily, I take pride in knowing that one of my all time favroite bands puts the death metal hyperblasting albums of bands like Kataklysm, Cryptopsy, and Krisiun to shame with just one record. While the above bands do hold there own in most other cases they pale in comparison to the lightning fast wrists of the brothers Doom Occulta.
"BLizzard Beasts" takes the formula from "Battles in the North" and kicks it up a notch by taking away a bit of the confusing guitar complexities and making up for it with sheer riffing ferocity. In short a death metal album done the Immortal way and as far as I'm concerned the right way.
On a side note "Blizzard Beasts" is a monument on its own but also acts as a transition record for what Immortal would do next. The best example of this can be found in the song "Mountains of Might", a song, albeit with a little Peter Tatgren polish, that could have found its way onto the brilliant "At the Heart of Winter."
In conclusion another remarkable album by one of the greatest outfits to grace us with its prescence.

Very compressed sound for a black metal album, rather heavy, but at 27 minutes quite short too. There are some catchy songs on here and the music is good, but Immortal would easily do better on future releases At The Heart of Winter and Damned In Black which are excellent.

Again, Immortal creates another amazing LP. Definitely not as good as their "At The Heart of Winter" LP...but that masterpiece is extremely hard to top. Dont get me wrong though, this is definitely not a bad CD in any way. It's actually pretty amazing. The instrumentals are naturally brutal...not forced at all- and the listener can clearly hear the beauty of the music as a whole and decipher between its great sound and just some pointless, random noise that other black metal bands tend to create. The guitar riffs are amazing, the vocals are good, the melodic edge to the songs are wonderful...it's all great. I wouldn't have expected any less from Immortal though...

Ah yes, the CD that sounds like Immortal on speed and caffeine. This CD is by far the fastest and most out-of-control of all of Immortals works. The guitar absolutely blazes, the double kick drums pound throughout the album, and the bass plucks along at ferocious speeds. The simple song structures of black metal have modulated into more symphonic death metal arrangements, and the sound is definitely unique. A hint of "Battles in the North" can be detected in this album, which leads me to believe this was an experiment in what different kinds of music Immortal can make.

The songs remain short, and no epics are found on this CD, save possibly Mountains of Might. With almost all of the CD's songs gathered around the three minute mark, it's almost unbelievable that Immortals next CD routinely presents us with songs six, seven, and eight minutes long. Blizzard Beasts is the last CD that features Demonaz on lead guitar (Due to arm tendonitis,) and sets into motion Abbath's permanent transition from bass to lead guitar; a move that I feel benefits Immortal in more ways than one.

As much as I love Demonaz on the six-string, Abbath brings a very unique and personal style to the table. The only way I can explain it is to listen to Blizzard Beasts and then listen to At the Heart of Winter; you will understand immediately.

When I hear this CD, it reminds me very much of Nile's "Amongst the Catacombs" compared to say... "In Their Darkened Shrines" (with ITDS being At the Heart of Winter) If you are a fan of Nile, you know what I mean.

In conclusion, I take to this album for what it is; an experiment in style that leads to some very fast and driving songs. As much as I like listening to this album, it pales in comparison to anything created after it, as Immortal prepares to unleash three absolutely epic albums back to back in the span of four years.