Band:	Immortal
Album:	Damned In Black
Style:	Black metal
Release date:	April 2000

01. Triumph
02. Wrath From Above
03. Against The Tide (In The Arctic World)
04. My Dimension
05. The Darkness That Embrace Me
06. In Our Mystic Visions Blest
07. Damned In Black

A new album from Immortal, and as we could thougthfully wait, a new step in their evolution. No matter to talk about the production, as a matter of fact the Abyss Studios (and Peter Tagtarten) are the best recording studios now, and the collaboration with Immortal is close to perfefction.
So let's look to the news in this album. Frist of all we have a new bassist: Iscariah, coming from Enchanted wich made a great work and gives a new weigth to the bass lines troughout the seven songs performing a spectral sound (listen to the first minute of "Against The Tide" to understand what I mean). Than we have a good inspired Horgh behind the drums that made the usual precise and speed rithmic.

Finally the ecleptic Abbath composing all the songs alone (or with the contribution of Horgh) more free from the influences of the outsider Demonaz than he was in the previous "At the Heart of Winter". Is it a good one or a bad one? Following the path chosen with the previous album the style without doubt is changed respect to the times of "Blizzard Beasts" or "Battles in the North" moving to sounds always more "thrash", the guitars are much more rithmic and the drums slower with less parts in double bass, we have anyway the usual cold riffs but we can feel the lack of the great and icy Demonaz's solos. In fact ecxept for the lyrics, written by the everlasting Demonaz, wich preserve theyr "snowy" contents, the rest, starting from the CD case seems to move a bit to the 'demoniac mood' rather than the usual winter theme.When asked about that Abbath answerwed:

-Maybe more devilish,it's our obsession. We love the black, dark side and it's a lifestyle which we are damned in and which we can't get out of and we don't want to get out of. Maybe this time everything is more open, musically and lyrically everything is more marked but it's still 100% Immortal, we've just taken it to another level, that's all.-

Well, another level indeed is the whole album but it doesn't mean at all that it's worse than the previous, the songs here gained a bit of complexity, power, and are also somehow more 'epic'.
So, a different album, they definitely evolved and it is a good thing because to play Black Metal doesn't mean to play always the same three riffs with a double bass and a screaming voice.
Another 'must', a lesson of style from the masters.