It took a certain nerve to keep Immortal alive without Abbath. Since the tumultuous mid-2010s departure of its emblematic singer-guitarist, the Norwegian band has rested on the sole shoulders of Demonaz, long the lyricist and conceptual brain behind the imaginary kingdom of Blashyrkh. War Against All, the first album conceived entirely under this new configuration, thus carried the weight of a test. The critics (an 80 average across eight reviews) confirm the wager is met.
What is hailed is, first, the fidelity to an identity forged back in the 1990s: that epic, martial black metal, its tremolos cut from ice, which made Immortal one of the pillars of the Bergen scene. Nothing here betrays the legacy; everything, on the contrary, concentrates its most recognisable traits, as if to remind us who holds the keys to the domain.
Musically, the record advances in the open: galloping riffs, a clean and powerful production, near-hymnal choruses that recall how this band has always loved an assumed grandiloquence. Demonaz’s rasping voice, less cavernous than his former partner’s, imposes a colour of its own, rougher, more frontal.
One will regret that War Against All takes few risks: the album operates on familiar ground, never seeking to surprise or to widen the band’s vocabulary. It is a record of continuity more than of invention, reassuring rather than overturning.
Verdict: 8/10. A solid, unabashed affirmation, proving that Immortal can survive its own myth. The cold, here, has lost none of its bite.
