Never understood this point. I'm not familiar with early Immortal but everything from AtHoW onwards have always sounded warm to very warm to me always creating a dissonance to the lyrics. Early Darkthrone could sound cold, as well as Burzum, but I always found Immortal to have a warm sound, full of bass and a generally modern production.

Purchased the album on EBay, 15 euros which I consider a great price. Very excited to listen to the full thing with a better sound quality.

Its not the production that gives the cold sound to Immortal; as you say, for much of their career, its been full, warm, detailed production. For me, its the actual melodies being used that make/made the music cold, especially the use of clean chorus-y guitar lines. I dunno, but I fucking see icy sunlight glancing off glaciers when I hear this shit.

At the Heart of Winter
Beyond the North Waves
Antartica
Where Mountains Rise

They all sound pretty wintry for me.

Pretty much this. I mean I am sure we would probably agree on a lot of Immortal material, just not this album.

Sounds like we agree on most things other than the new album. Blizzard Beasts had some great riffs, but the production is just so weird, I always have trouble listening to the whole thing. The drums sound like hitting various sized paper and plastic bags with a stick or something. I even think Damned in Black is underrated, it's got at least 4 really good songs. The title track of SoND and In my Kingdom Cold are also 2 of my favorite songs. I would put PH and Battles as my top 2, but depending on what kinda mood I'm in, AtHoW and NCG could be just as good. I listened to AtHoW recently again and forgot how mid-paced it was compared to some of their other stuff, like the new one.

I finally got to listen to this. Thing is, I'm not a big fan of the stuff with Abbath on guitar. All the albums, to me, were just missing something, and I don't just mean the less clean sound. Even if Demonaz was still involved with the writing process somehow and even if you can argue that the band didn't really change their sound too drastically, Abbath's playing just felt very different.

So, I listened to this new album, and I can still hear some of what they were doing with Abbath on guitar -- lots of triumphant, anthemic heavy metal basically. But that thing I was missing? i think it's back now, and that tells me it was just Demonaz all along. There's just something about the way he plays guitar that's unique and the way the ethereal leads play over the riffs is just special, and while I'm not a guitarist and sometimes lack the words to describe playing styles, even though there was lots of lead guitar in the Abbath-axeman era, it didn't shine through in the same way and didn't complement the riffs so well. That's what I think, anyway.

And I think criticising the vocals for being too much like Abbath is totally unfair. Sure, if you get down to it, a lot of black metal guys deliver vocals in a similar, rather generic way. But I don't even feel like Demonaz was necessarily trying to copy Abbath at all on this album. The approach is certainly individual enough that you can tell it's someone else if you're a seasoned listener to this type of vocal style.

I think this is one of my favorite new albums from an old BM band in a long time, honestly... I find myself going back and listening to it quite a bit.

While it seems as though Abbath is having issues, it's great to see Demonaz back and carrying the torch!

I hope it stays like this. No disrespect to Abbath but maybe he can just go off and do his own thing from now on (which he seems to be doing). Immortal needs Demonaz!

In a way it's funny that people freaked out about Abbath leaving the band, when practically the exact same thing happened to Demonaz after he had to stop playing guitar. Yeah, he still wrote the lyrics, but for all musical intents, he was out of the band. But I guess that's how it is with frontmen - they're the most visible, they're the voice (especially when it's a unique one like Abbath's).

From what I've heard of this album, it seems very one-note. Every song seems to have been written with a "path of least resistance" approach. By this I mean, rather than fit contrasting riffs together like puzzle pieces, as on albums like Pure Holocaust, Demonaz is content to play songs that are easy to write, play and recall on guitar. Take a song like "Grim and Dark" for instance, there is literally one idea in the entire song. E, F. E, F. E, F. Over and over. Not once does the tonality of the song deviate from 0 and 1 on the E string. Contrast that to AtHoW, which had so many disparate ideas that propelled songs through icy landscapes, this feels flat and empty. Of course minimal development can work nicely in black metal, but I don't think that's ever been what Immortal excelled at. I agree with most of what Acidgoblin said above, the lack of creative songwriting is reinforced by the self-referential lyrics that border on parody. The whole thing feels uninspired and bashed out as quickly as possible to prove that Demonaz could do it without Abbath.

If others are excited to hear new Immortal that's cool, and clearly people are looking at its standing review average, but I'll still prefer the era when both Occultas were in the band. DFM and yes, Battles in the North both rule.