At The Heart Of Winter - Immortal

Depending on the listener's preference, Immortal's fifth album is either the point at which they sold out, or actually started to make decent music for the first time. A far cry from the short, sharp, icy shocks of their earlier material, the songs are now longer, denser and more intricate, possessing actual structure for the first time rather than simply focusing on hammering out some blast beats for three minutes. Abbath is a much more impressive guitarist than his predecessor Demonaz, even if his riffs and melodies borrow distinctly from the heavy metal tradition, in many places sounding like dead ringers for Iron Maiden, if that band played black metal. ...  Read the complete review