Immortal just reformed without abbath.

Immortal without Abbath just won't feel right, but maybe they can go back to playing less heavy/thrash influenced black metal like their first 3 albums.

Part of me thinks the legal issues will come right back and muck it all up again

Or maybe they'll somehow actually settle it....maybe

BTW OP it's a good idea to have a source handy.

Here is the news

http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/abbath ... elieve-in/

If this is true, Abbath lost the battle, thus having no option than changing the name of his band. Demonaz I guess is able of at least composing Immortal like material.

I thought Demonaz and Horgh wanted more time off from music and all of a sudden they're working on new material?!

Whatever, I'm siding with Abbath on this. Immortal won't be the same without him.

I'm happy either way ... This is pretty much two immortal albums coming out at relatively the same time, stoked

Damn. While I mean, they totally can do this, Immortal without Abbath just doesn't seem to make sense. It's like if Roger Beaujard kicked out Will Rahmer, or if Nocturno Culto told Fenriz to fuck off.

The only source on that was Abbath, mind you. Up until now they haven't actually said anything about the case.

So this band is done releasing anything good then.

"Abbath-less Immortal"...isn't that an oxymoron? "Bread-free sandwich." "Fast drone." "Bad blowjob." Some of the things coming to mind when I hear the phrase "Abbath-less Immortal."

Silly Blabbermouth, once again displaying their failure as a credible metal news site. They think "Abbath-less Immortal" is a thing. Posers!

I thought All Shall Fall proved that?

I dunno, I'd be interested if Demonaz can play guitar like his old Immortal stuff. If you had an album full of 1990s Immortal riffs, then I'd be interested. But I think that's probably just physically impossible for him... whatever they'll do will probably just end up as dull Wacken black metal.

In the band page here on MA it says that Demonaz started to play guitars again.

Source?

Demonaz and Horgh have new material all of a sudden?? So it's about artistic differences the entire time and Immortal probably goes back to stuff like Pure Holocaust? They could have sorted this out way sooner. Six years kind of lost.
Pfft, i hope they don't use the word "brother" ever again. It'd be bullshit.

I get why Demonaz and Horgh would want to use the Immortal name from a business standpoint, but from an artistic standpoint it makes little sense. The guy who played on every album (sometimes playing most of the instruments), sang everything, and wrote most of the music is removed and the band is going to continue with the lyricist who can no longer play guitar (at least for this style of music) and the drummer who joined after the band had already recorded 3 albums? And, so far as being a possible touring band, it would just be Horgh and a bunch of hired hands? Is anyone interested in that version of Immortal?

I thought it was established that Demonaz could still play guitar, too.
That said I doubt this will at all be a return to anything like the Pure HOlocaust sound. Demonaz wanted to take the band in a more heavy metal sort of direction, too. He's just a more inventive guitarist than Abbath. At the Heart of Winter grew on me after a while but I'd be perfectly happy if that had been the final Immortal album.

Was it not?

Demonaz can and possibly will be the vocalist. He already proved it with his Demonaz project. Also, Demonaz (while still in Immortal with Abbath as member) stated in plenty that he never stopped to contribute to songwriting and he still plays guitar, it's just he can't play it for too long... he could even be able to record an album in several sessions if his condition has improved over time, we don't know.

Did really Abbath write most of the music? My bet is that Demonaz wrote most of the stuff when he was active as guitarist and he was probably the one who came up with the 'icy' trademark riffing in the first place. The sound shift is really obvious when he stopped playing and Abbath took over guitar duties in ATHOW.

As I see it, there is hope for a good Immortal album without Abbath, if Demonaz still has it. He might write all the music with Horgh; for live shows he can sing and complete the line-up with session members (1-2 guitars + 1 bassist).

Lastly, Demonaz and Horgh remained silent the whole time and haven't badmouthing Abbath at all, which is a positive in my eyes. Abbath talked a lot of shit but he lost the legal battle, so if he really 'was' Immortal he should have won. My bet is Abbath was full of shit and probably wanted to take full control of the band which the rest of the guys weren't up to.

I'd be perfectly fine with this new Immortal developing the sound from Demonaz's solo album even further, as that album was quite great. I don't anticipate they'll go back to sounding like Pure Holocaust or Battles in the North, and really I don't want them to.

Interesting, two Immortal's...but with how old the band is and how far they've split, I'd be surprised if we get anything that remotely captures the best elements of what Immortal brought to the table. What I'm expecting is cheese galore. Even if there was no split, I don't really have much confidence or high expectations for anyone involved at this point. But I love to be surprised.

For either one of these bands to call it immortal is just foolish! Immortal is done! We got all shall fall and it blew hard!!! The I project was great so hopefully Abbath will go in that direction and demonaz in the direction of his solo album. Each band however will play immortal shit live, but it's just not the real immortal without the two of them together.

Demonaz and Horgh are starting to seem like total dicks... Don't let Abbath take over the band name, more or less force him out and then continue without him, well played.

I really liked Demonaz solo album (as well as Abbaths I-project) but this is gonna be really weird.

I'm not a big BM fan so I liked them better on the AtHoW -> SoND era so this is doing nothing for me. Immortal and Abbath are synonymous to me. Horgh is a fine drummer but him and a few hired hands live is not Immortal.

Okay band when Demonaz was the guitarist, once Abbath took over, it's been shit album after shit album. Party black metal, basically.

The only correct response to this whole debacle. Immortal died in 2003 as far as their studio albums are concerned.

They just went full Gorgoroth. You don't EVER go full Gorgoroth. Special guest appearance by L-G Petrov incoming.

Why is this even necessary? If Demonaz is going to write the music, lyrics, and do vocals then why the hell doesn't he just continue with his solo band? Seriously, is this whole debacle just so he can cash in on Immortal's name? Fuck that.

They should get together with Geoff Tate and call themselves "creative bankruptcy"

also just a sidenote: All Shall Fall was pretty bad. Immotal without blastbeats is all filler no killer

Bah, the debut has maybe one blastbeat on the entire record and it's nearly all killer!

God damn right. Just some young punks who wanted to sound like Bathory. The debut rules.

C'mon, guys... Give'em a chance...

https://www.facebook.com/immortaloffici ... =1&theater



Their previous singer. Eeesh.

edit: that's the same statement as linked in the blabbermouth piece. "Immortal" just now posted it to their FB page, though.

He was just their previous singer, not like he ever did anything important in the band like play guitar, drums or bass. I mean maybe if he had been their only singer for like 25 years. Most people won't even notice he's gone.

After all the years they now look like: "We are busy, i'm injured, we have no time. Oh, look he's finally gone, let's start making music again."
Snakes. Guess, i'll "boycott" 'em.

By the way, Abbath has always been Immortal's principal song arranger. Demonaz came up with riffs, but Abbath decided where they should go, as well as adding his own stuff. Abbath also wrote everything from At the Heart of Winter onwards.

This is just really disappointing to see. When I was first getting into black metal as a (comparatively) little kid, Abbath and Horgh were like a superhero team, and Demonaz was kind of like their adviser back at the base.

This picture is one of the things that got me into black metal. I saw it, laughed at it, then checked out Sons of Northern Darkness and my mind was blown. Even when I saw them live finally during their tour with Absu, where they mostly played shitty All Shall Fall stuff, there was still something magical about seeing those two faces fade in and out of the smoke machine's fog during songs from At the Heart of Winter.

Had this sort of thing happened ten years ago, I would have been pretty shook up (then again, Immortal were officially nonexistent ten years ago, but still...), but nowadays, I just kind of shake my head at things like this that I have no control over. I'd be a little bit more torn up about something like this if it happened to a band that was still good (i.e. Silenius and Protector getting into a fight or Ross Dolan and Bob Vigna having a falling out).

This will never, ever happen. Those first four Immortal albums are my personal favorites, and they're probably the most historically important things the band released, but any audience interested in [insert new Immortal album title here] is undoubtedly looking for Sons of Northern Darkness II: The Quickening. I'm not even sure if it's possible to record something like Battles in the North nowadays. Black metal just doesn't get that intense anymore without being "war metal." The genre is too split up into different niche sounds for something resembling Pure Holocaust to come out of the blue. I would love to be proven wrong on that point, of course.

Ok, it's one thing to point out your favourite albums, and that's fine, there are some classic tracks on their first four... but to suggest At the Heart of Winter isn't clearly by a veeerrry large margin their most influential, pivotal, sound-pioneering, etc etc album? That's just rewriting history to suit your own purposes. The band (at this exact point) went from playing decent-but-unremarkable bm (silly poses aside) to an incredible mix of bm and thrash/trad metal that they'll be remembered for for pretty much ever.

OT: I dunno, don't really care. I doubt they have any more classics left in them on either side of this little rift, so... scheißegal?

Immortal was already legendary when Blizzard was out. The Abbath lead albums were more accessible and helped to get a wider audience but Immortal got a name in metal for those first 4 albums. There's no need of revisionism.

No fucks given here. There hasnt been a good Immortal album since ATHOW and the last one was boring as hell. No need to follow all this drama.

In this case, I think you're guilty of doing exactly what you'r accusing him of doing. You might remember them for At The Heart of Winter, but gauging from the Immortal fans I've met, that's not necessarily the popular choice among long-time fans of the band. I've always heard Pure Holocaust to be considered the cream of the Immortal crop. Preferring early Immortal or later Immortal is more of a statement of taste, but to say that Immortal didn't release anything incredible until AtHoW is completely retarded.

The majority of their influence and importance was centered around their earlier works. I'm not sure how you or anyone else can confuse this. AtHoW was a really solid album, but their importance was established before that album released, and that album definitely was never considered most important or blatant best by any stretch of the imagination. Immortal could've disbanded before releasing AtHoW and they'd still be considered to have been a major player in black metal for their contributions. If anything, AtHoW simply marked a new era for the band, where they'd begin to release a more accessible version of their sound that has little relevance to what they were creating previously. Undoubtedly, it's latter-day Immortal, and latter-day Immortal is aiming at a completely different target audience than the first four.

TheTrueSeker, that was a beautiful post and I agree with everything in it.

@Turner: I don't think it's a consensus that At the Heart of Winter is their most influential album, is it? It's one of their biggest, most popular albums, but I'd probably say Pure Holocaust is their most influential.

This this this. 17 Y/O me was well aware of Immortal prior to the release of ATHOW, and that's from the opposite end of the globe, pre-internet days. First album I heard of them was Battles (first BM album I ever heard actually) and I remember being blown away by how raw and chaotic it sounded.