eMusic Review 0
They've got the corpsepaint and the sickening grimaces and the ten-ton battleaxes, but unholy Nordic metallers Immortal have always skewed iconoclastic. For one thing, they once had the temerity to release an album with a white cover — a fact for which they still get shit from some of the genres more dogmatic followers. Where most of their peers hail Satan, Immortal are naturalists, holding that the apocalypse will arrive not when the gates of hell are loosed, but when Mother Nature finally has enough of us and decides to pummel us with floods and wildfires. And on All Shall Fall, their first record in seven years and — by some good distance — the best of the lot, Immortal demonstrate a fondness for thinking big.
Indeed what's most notable about All Shall Fall is its swagger. Its seven songs take broad, vicious swipes, favoring chords that swoop down strong and steady instead of the usual black metal jackhammer. There's an odd brightness to the driving title track, Abbath's expansive riffing endlessly hammered by Horgh's impossible hailstorm drumming. In the almost-decade since the rightly-acclaimed Sons of Northern Darkness, Abbath's voice has grown hoarser and viler, and he croaks out his… read more »
