2000
Battles In The North
About This Album
Battles in the North, Immortal's third razor-caked candy bar, is considered by many to be one of black metal's defining moments. Like its highly regarded, slower, and slightly less-focused predecessor, Pure Holocaust, Battles in the North is a furious, somewhat under-produced, unrelenting assault of blastbeats, demon-reptile vocals, and buzzing guitars assembled for one reason only: to unleash the misbegotten souls of frozen Norwegian landscapes into glorious battle against all things remotely commercial or accessible, taking no prisoners. The result is ten blurry tracks of hyper-tempo blackness that somehow corral melody within a constant rhythmic pummel, especially on bona fide classic cuts "Circling Above in Time Before Time" and "Blashyrkh (Mighty Ravendark)." Never before had such anti-production benefited an album's theme, the sometimes-indiscernible wash of guitars and blasting drums invoking visions of whiteout blizzards, with only vocalist Abbath Doom Occulta's creepy croak -- spewing startlingly effective and poetic English-as-a-second-language war imagery -- able to permeate such dense instrumental storms. Oh, and the title track may just be the most devastating, skin-filleting shriek of black metal pain ever to emanate from Scandinavia's wintry clime.
Track List (try tracks 2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 10)

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