Immortal - Norther Chaos Gods

Their first album in nine years and the group’s first after reuniting with founding member Demonaz without founding frontman Abbath, Northern Chaos Gods is unfortunately not as bold of a proclamation of the now-two-piece band’s fortitude after the legal tumult that split them apart.
Immortal had been gradually losing steam since the turn of the century, but not so much that I could look at their newer work as a tarnishing of their legacy. And this new album isn’t anywhere that level of lowness for the band, but it certainly doesn’t provide Immortal the long-needed kickstart it should have.
While its mediocrity and creative staleness could be looked at as the grinding away of old rust from the gears of bandmates (who only shared presence on Blizzard Beasts previously) reuniting after decades apart. In that sense it seems acceptable, but Northern Chaos Gods comes well after the dust of the the band’s raucous division has settled, and two years after their former bandmate released his solo project. Given how much time Demonaz and Horgh had to work together and with Peter Tägtgren in the studio, this album should have been much more than just a typical slog of 21st century Immortal tracks and a continuation of the band’s musical deceleration.
It’s not a terrible album the way Bullet for My Valentine’s newest auditory mouth-defecation was; it still has some nice atmosphere, attentive production, and even a few good uses of various guitar dynamics, especially on the closing track, “Mighty Ravendark”. But so much of it is stuck at the same pace rehashing the same structural ideas it becomes a chore to listen to and not something a sort of comeback album should sound like.
I really wish there was more to say about this album that hasn’t been said about their previous works in abundance, but this album just feels like it didn’t even try to get me to care about it. The inconsistent group’s output had long been missing the raw energy and true ferocity of albums like Pure Holocaust and Battles in the North, but I would wager even All Shall Fall had slightly more bite to it than this one, which, again, isn’t a particularly bad album outside Immortal’s world, but coming from them, in the place they’e in, it needed to be more than the autopilot roadblock it is. I wasn’t the biggest fan of his album (though I did indeed like it), but Abbath’s self-titled project in 2016 was much more exciting than this record, and it really puts this one in a bad light two years later.

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