Oh, Mr. Abbath, how you do intrigue us black metal fans so. I was going to check out this album no matter what I did. I wasn’t one of those people that was all “I gotta hear that!” or vice versa: “It’s gonna f**king suck!” I was interested, though, and after hearing “Abbath” front to back in this f**king blizzard we had here, I can certainly say that the man has proven himself to still be one of the world’s leading authorities in black metal. The two things that really stood out to me about this album were the minor atmospheric bits that lasted for short times and the overwhelming amount of riffs that are jam packed into this record. The atmospheric effects weren’t a whole lot as they were very minor (ex.: boots marching, an absolute downpour of rain) and while they didn’t have a huge impact on “Abbath”, to me they really helped you move into the track only to give you a sharp uppercut of black metal that you were waiting for and it is oh so delicious. It makes me happy to see that Abbath is able to make longer songs that are over 5 minutes long seem shorter simply because everything is just so fast and ruthless that it seems to shorten the pace of everything and that’s f**king awesome if you ask me because it shows that this band can handle longer songs just as well as shorter ones which is something that not all bands are able to manage no matter how long they’ve been in the business. There’s not a whole lot of diversity going throughout “Abbath” which isn’t bad but after a while it starts to make you want something a tad different, and that being said Abbath still manage to create an awesome pure black metal album by any and all standards of the genre. And if you want something that’s still black metal but with a bit of a different feel to it then maybe the cover of Judas Priest’s “Riding on the Wind” will get you going, or maybe even a new rendition of Immortal’s “Nebular Ravens Winter” will get you going, I don’t f**king know with you people. But in the end, “Abbath” is a solid album 100% and anyone who wants to hear an Immortal 2.0 album will have to go somewhere else because Abbath has shown that they are black metal, yes, but they are their own separate entity with different ideas, and so far those ideas are pure gold. Or black . . . they’re good.
You can purchase “Abbath” via iTunes here, stream the album in full on Bandcamp here, or listen to the track “Ashes of the Damned” via YouTube below.
