Demonaz and Horgh Continue Immortal Without Abbath, Will Release New Album in 2016
It would appear that the legal battle between Abbath (by himself) and Demonaz and Horgh (together) over the Immortal name is now over. According to Blabbermouth…
“Norwegian black metallers IMMORTAL — now consisting of lyricist/guitarist Demonaz (real name Harald Nævdal) and drummer Horgh (real name Reidar Horghagen) following last year’s split with frontman Olve Eikemo (a.k.a. Abbath) — are working on material for the band’s next album, to be released via the Nuclear Blast label.
“Demonaz, IMMORTAL‘s founding member, has created the material based on his visions of Blashyrkh for nearly 25 years.
“Songtitles set to appear on the CD include ‘Northern Chaos Gods,’ ‘Called To Ice’ and ‘Blacker Of Worlds.’”
That second paragraph is actually kind of misleading — yes, Demonaz is a founding member of Immortal, but so was Abbath, and yes, Demonaz has been writing the band’s lyrics “based on his visions of Blashyrkh for nearly 25 years,” but Abbath wrote all the music. And, sorry to say it, the music is the really important component of Immortal — you can hardly understand the lyrics most of the time anyway.
I guess my point is: bummer though it may be, this sounds to me like this is gonna be Immortal in name only. The silver lining, though, is that Abbath is still working on his solo project — and that will very likely be Immortal in everything but name. You can check a live version of some of Abbath’s solo material here.
