Immortal: War Against All
Some say one is the loneliest number that you’ll ever meet. But for Demonaz Doom Occulta of IMMORTAL, being a one-man band is exactly what the black metal behemoth needs.
“It was the only way to get this band back on the right track, because there were problems before,” declares Demonaz from his mountainside home just beyond Bergen. “After All Shall Fall, things weren’t going in the right direction so I had to take back the band to where it started, and where it started was a vision in my head to have the most uncompromising black metal band, musically, ever – and that’s what I feel I’ve gotten now.”
Taking IMMORTAL back to its roots of fast and furious black metal was no easy feat. Like cutting limbs off, Demonaz has lost friends along the way. From the departure of co-founder and vocalist Abbath in 2015 – “the band was suffering, it was difficult to be on the same channel, so it was better to go each our way and for him to do his own thing, and for me to do IMMORTAL and put it back on track – it was that or nothing” – to the split with drummer Horgh only last year, following lawsuits over the band’s name.
2018’s Northern Chaos Gods took the black metal back to Blashyrkh. But it’s follow-up War Against All raises the stakes, doubling down on the old school mentality that set the genre in stone decades ago. Starting from a place of fear, where Demonaz was “afraid the music would go more in the direction of progressive or more modern,” which was not an option, as “that is not the true essence of this music; IMMORTAL’s music is best when it’s very distinct, and very insisting, and very determined. It doesn’t have to have 20 riffs in each song or a lot of fancy solos, it can be better than that.”
Labelling the new era as “IMMORTAL punk”, stripping things back and writing songs the old school way was where War Against All took off. “Instead of making 30 riffs for a song, I will concentrate on the main riffs to get the most out of it, so I don’t make so much disturbance from the core,” explains Demonaz, like a mad scientist claiming a Nobel prize. “If you take a song like Return To Cold or War Against All, there’s not so many riffs on those songs, but they are well worked on, so you don’t think about it; when I say to you, there’s less than 10 riffs on the first song [War Against All], you never thought about it right?”
Ultimately, it comes down to taking inspiration from the greats of heavy metal’s golden age, when music sounded simple and timeless. “It’s a way to make something really good out of what you’ve got, and that makes songs more timeless; it’s not so much different breaks, not so much happening in the songs, they’re very straight and determined, it’s very IMMORTAL.”
Whilst “it’s hard to get the sound of the 90s,” if “you’re going to make the music of the 90s, you’re well on your way if instead of trying to sound very fancy or very professional, it was important to work in the universe where things are already placed.” In his quest to retrace IMMORTAL’s steps, and reclaim their black metal throne, Demonaz found himself revisiting the music of his youth.
“All the music from the second generation of black metal came from somewhere, right? I didn’t grow up listening just to black metal, I grew up listening to 70s rock like DEEP PURPLE and IRON MAIDEN,” he says emphatically, spilling the secrets on tracks like Wargod’s detour into NWOBHM. “My music is old school because I listened to old school music when I started to write this; the way of writing songs was verse, chorus, verse, chorus.”
Even the album’s title, War Against All, is inspired by the heavy metal greats that came before it. Originally titled Return To Cold, Demonaz wanted a title that kicked a little harder like the classic IMMORTAL sound. “I thought it was a bit like Kill ‘Em All – let’s oppose them, let’s do something more wild, like it’s fucking Blashyrkh so let’s do something a little more aggressive, more brutal.”
War Against All isn’t just inspired by DEEP PURPLE, IRON MAIDEN, and METALLICA; it all begin with Demonaz taking a trip in the IMMORTAL time machine to 1995’s Battles In The North. “Every time I start work on an album, I always go back and listen to the old records. Sometimes it can be good to just play through those songs, and the day after I found the main riff for War Against All and then the next day I wrote Return To Cold; Battles In The North was the breakthrough.”
From there, Demonaz reunited with long-term collaborator and ENSLAVED guitarist Arve Isdal to produce War Against All’s black metal punk. “He can do many things, he’s like a wizard; we didn’t want to make a very polished album, he wanted it to be dirty, he wanted it to be rock and roll, and full of energy, so he understands my music very well.”
Locking themselves away at Bergen’s Earshot & Conclave Studios, they only strengthened the isolation the battles of Blashyrkh thrives on. It only served to replicate IMMORTAL’s career-long writing process, where “in the summer, I don’t do music – May, June, July, I don’t want write songs,” before letting Autumn come where “I can write a lot of good riffs, because I’m so inspired; it’s the same with all those old records, I don’t listen to them when I’m in the city, I save those records for when everything is in the right mood, because motivation and inspiration, it’s sacred, it’s everything.”
But beyond anything else, War Against All’s icy soundscapes come from the self-isolation Demonaz has spent years seeking and finally found “by the foot of a glacier” near The Hardangervidda National Park, following a move from Bergen five years ago. “My house is surrounded by mountains, with a great view, and there’s snow all year, so that is a big, big inspiration, having the possibility to move to a place like that, it’s in the wilderness,” he says emphatically. “When you have surroundings like that, it’s freedom; it’s more easier to write, much more easier to be a composer and make music.”
With his new-found freedom fanning his creative flames all year long, Demonaz could see his vision for IMMORTAL clearer than ever before. It allowed him to take back control completely, resulting in their shortest, and most concise offering since 2000’s Damned In Black, clocking in at 38 minutes. Just like IMMORTAL’s career, it came from rebelling against pop culture. “I was reacting to getting papers from Nuclear Blast, where it’s like a plan for the album, and it said minimum 43 minutes, and I said to my manager, ‘no way I’m making an album for a certain time that people ask me to’ – I make the music as I want it, if it’s 25 minutes, it’s 25 minutes; I make an album, I don’t make songs.”
Whilst streaming services have severed connections with albums for younger listeners, the sacredness of Side A and B lingers long in IMMORTAL’s realm. Having grown up gushing over MORBID ANGEL’s Altars Of Madness, Demonaz dines in creating classic albums, which is why “when I sit down to make an IMMORTAL album, I’m thinking of the whole album; I’ve never tried to make one hit song, I always try to see the wholeness of the album that’s what I grew up with, that’s what I thought was ultimate, and what I want the fans to have.”
War Against All, from its battle metal blizzards (Thunders Of Darkness, Immortal) to its freezing cold, soul-encasing instrumentals (Norlandihr), is an album made for fans. Take the towering seven minute Norlandihr, a track which captures the feeling of being frozen alive, made to empower fans “if you’re out walking, it will drive you; it’ll help you walk up the mountain”.
You’d be forgiven for thinking the grim world of Blashyrkh could represent our own, with global pandemics, invasions of countries, and cost of living crisis taking over. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. “When I write music and lyrics, I try to pass on all those things; it’s no politics, no religion, nothing,” he says. “It’s always Blashyrkh, or nature, or the expression of the cold and dark, which is a package for me. I always thought that when I was listening to POSSESSED’s Beyond The Gates, CELTIC FROST’s To Mega Therion, or Hell Awaits by SLAYER, it was a journey – when you listen to the album, you listen to the whole album? It’s some kind of journey through hell, with good energy, and this one is a journey through Blashyrkh; I wish my fans will listen from the first song to the last song.”
Deep down, despite the darkness IMMORTAL flourishes in, War Against All is an album of hope for all who listen. “I hope they feel powerful, I hope it gives them something, and they feel like ‘fucking hell, this is the shit, this is fucking great riffs for going somewhere’. That is why I do this, I get great energy from making the ultimate riffs; that is the driving force for me, that is my drug, that is my medicine.”
War Against All is out now via Nuclear Blast Records.
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