Style: Epic black metal
Primary Emotions/Themes: The title says it all, this is the very heart of winter
Thoughts: Oh wow what a change. This is the first Immortal album without Demonaz and the change in style is immediately evident. Instead of a thirty minute album consisting of nine to ten songs, we have a six song album spanning nearly forty five minutes. Instead of a raw recording we have the cleanest production that the band has ever had. Instead of the band posing for the cover, we have a fully painted cover. The changes are many and they are very real.
The instant that the album is started the changes are evident. Withstand the fall of time has an enormous introduction that sounds different than anything the band has created before. As the song progresses the music becomes slowly more familiar to the Immortal we know. Sometimes we'll get some chaotic riffs, other times we'll get a blasting section... but overall there has been a fundamental shift in the bands sound.
The music is now more deliberate. More focused on melody than it ever was before, in many ways more accessible than it ever was before. The only time that the band has sounded like this in the past was on Mountains of Might on Blizzard Beasts. It's as if the band took the ideas in that song and decided to make an entire album out of it.
Now the real question is, is this good or bad? For my money, there is more good here than bad. There are some points where the band falters a little bit, but overall this is quite an enjoyable album... but it also marks a shift in the bands style. Gone are the raw days of the early albums. In many ways the honesty of those albums is gone as well... instead we have a version of Immortal that is more polished and approachable.
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