IMMORTAL — Battles in the North (review)

IMMORTAL — Battles in the North album cover

Album · 1995 · Black Metal

4.5/5 · 2011-05-09
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Battles in the North is the third album from black metal act Immortal, released in 1995. As soon as the album kicks off you can hear that it is a fast, brutal black metal affair. From start to finish the band barely pause from the pounding riffs and blast-beating drums. The actual music and song writing in this formula is fine, but there are two faults that make Battles in the North not be the great album that it should be.

The first of these is Abbath’s vocals. He puts on a good performance through most of the album, but there are times when he just doesn’t sound very strong. For example on the opening song, the title track, he sounds great, but later on Throned by Blackstorms he sounds much weaker. Not awful you must understand, just not as good. It's this lack of consistency that lowers my overall opinion of the album.

The second fault with Battles in the North is that its production sounds terrible. I’m not talking about in the traditional raw black metal way, but in a technical way. You don’t hear it if you’re playing the album in a CD player as a whole, but try skipping into a few tracks and you’ll likely hear the final bar of the previous song, a pause, and then the song you were actually trying to play. An example of this is the second song, Grim and Frostbitten Kingdoms. Of course it doesn’t affect the actual music all that much, but it makes me think that they were lazy when producing Battles in the North, and put it out before the mix was correct. My opinion of this subject is enforced by the fact that the track list is printed incorrectly both on the back of the CD and in it’s booklet. While not a fault I can blame on Immortal, it makes me wonder if the track listing that is printed is in fact how the album was meant to be, making another fault with the production, or whether just a simple printing mistake. Either way, it’s something that has never been corrected with each pressing of Battles in the North as far as I can tell (my disc is a '97 pressing). While this is certainly not a fault that I’d deduct points from the final score for, I must just say, this incorrect track listing makes for a very confusing first listen when you don’t know the songs on the album and aren’t following the lyrics.

Fortunately the quality of the writing saves the album. This style isn't exactly technical or ground breaking but it suits Immortal well, with tracks such as Grim and Frostbitten Kingdoms with its short and to the point raw black metal attack and Cursed Realms of the Winterdemons with its surprisingly use of clean guitars standing out as particular highlights along with album closer and best track, Blashyrkh (Mighty Ravendark), which is the most versatile song on Battles in the North and it certainly is a case of leaving the best to last. It features most heavy black metal riffs, a clean interlude and even a section that features only a synthesiser and vocal. It has a guitar solo from Demonaz too. Thrilling stuff.

Overall despite the faults I found with it Battles in the North is still a pretty strong release from Immortal and is recommendable to existing fans of the band, although I would recommend just about any other Immortal album as a starting point for them.

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven, scoring 8.5/10)