|
|
|
|
At The Heart Of Winter is a very important album in Immortal’s history. This is the first album of Immortal’s great trilogy before their split-up. Furthermore this is the first Immortal album in which Demonaz, co-founder of Immortal, could not participate, due to his arm injuries. Since there was not a replacement for Demonaz yet, Abbath had to play guitar, bass, and synthesizer in addition to doing the vocals and writing all the music. The cover of the album is not the typical photo of the band members, but a beautiful wintry landscape painted by Fournier J.P. Immortal’s new logo was first printed on the cover of this album too. Finally this is Horgh’s favorite Immortal album.
There are only six tracks in this album but all the tracks are quite long (the average length for each track is 7:30). Of course the music of this album is rather different from Immortal’s previous albums. After three successful albums in old school black metal, Immortal decided to be more innovative in their music, thus they tried to incorporate other genres of metal music such as Death Metal in their works too. Blizzard Beasts was the turning point, and some heavy metal and mainly death metal influences can be discerned in that album. However blending of these different genres of metal music is more successful here (and in the next two albums) than Blizzard Beasts. In this first album of New Immortal there are some of Immortal’s best riffs especially in “Withstand The Fall Of Time”, “Years Of Silent Sorrow” and the title song, “At The Heart Of Winter”. Horgh’s drumming is great as usual and adds another dimension to the whole album. There is not much to say about the synthesizers because all through the album, one can hardly hear them except in the beginning of the title song. The lyrics are more mature than the previous albums and their main themes are winter and darkness. The best of them (in my idea) is “Years Of Silent Sorrow” which begins with “Farewell”. Blashyrkh is mentioned only in the title song; this song starts with the sound of “naked winds”, and somewhere in the middle of that Abbath sings “Blashyrkh Mighty be your name, victorious a kingdom we made”. Now after Immortal’s split-up, the artwork of this album with that mysterious castle in its middle, makes me understand that line better.
| Tracklist |
| 1. Withstand Te Fll Of Time |
| 2. Solarfall |
| 3. Tragedies Blow At Horizon |
| 4. Where Dark And Light Don't Differ |
| 5. At The Heart Of Winter |
| 6. Years Of Silent Sorrow |
: 46.07
| Buy other Immortal albums |
