Nu Metal = Rap Rock - "Northern Chaos Gods" Review (0%)
I had been curious about Immortal's 'nu' phase for quite some time, in the same vein as the morbid curiosity I get from hearing about a triple homicide in the news. I had heard that it was terrible, but what I found was not so much talentless posing as rotten trendwhoring.
While I'm not a fan of Immortal in any sense, regarding their best work as ranging from 'ok' to 'enjoyable', but this is beyond the pale. In case anybody was wondering, what the Immortal clowns have done here is take their old guitarist Abbath - the one who actually wrote riffs instead of chugging - and replaced him with bath salt addicted nu-metaller Demonaz and then made an album with, I shit you not, every single nu-metal cliché there ever was. Listening this immediately transported me back to middle school, even though I never actually heard any of Northern Chaos Gods back then, but only due to how derivative and generic the songs are.
The disc starts off with a serious case of jumpdafuckup, with chugging I could play with a dildo instead of a pick. While high on barbiturates. The type of 'riffs' that would be followed by a 'Can you hear me, [insert city]?' when played live.
We then get treated to a few rhyming lines on the Northern Chaos Gods title track, done in a grumpy whisper that was all the rage in the late 90's, as popularized by bands like Korn and Slipknot. I don't believe this track has anything that I'd call an actual riff, and there are maybe 3 deathchore chugga chugga chord patterns at best. The vocals range from rapping - which I unironically find to be the most tolerable vocal style Demonaz uses on Northern Chaos Gods - to that nu-metal shout that was popularized by seemingly every band from Papa Roach to Machine Head to The Deftones.
By the time this album is a few tracks in, we're wading neck-high in nu-metal clichés. I swear, it's like Demonaz compiled a list of EVERY cliché done by every nu-metal band ever and compiled it into a full length album. If you liked Immortal's vocals on anything from Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism to All Shall Fall, you will be severely disappointed because Northern Chaos Gods' style is not even black metal, Abbath's generic if not passable vocals being replaced by this amorphous nu metal whine. The lyrics range from rural douchebaggy rap rock to whiny mallgoth screamo, and the whispering and pseudo-crying really gets on my nerves every time I have to hear it.
Nu Metal = Rap Rock
Don't expect the instruments to be any better than the vocals. Horgh is clearly capable of better drumming than this, as he sticks to basic, monotonous and sloppy mid-tempo blast beats to the point where it becomes difficult to believe he was in a respectable death metal band a couple years prior.
That's perhaps what's so morbidly fascinating about Immortal's transformation in the years that followed Abbath's replacement by Demonaz, that it went from decent albeit overrated and derivative black metal band to complete nu-metal trailer park dwelling dregs. And this also symbolizes exactly what is so wrong about Northern Chaos Gods - it's fake. It's not what Abbath and co. really were as a band, and Demonaz' shit vision of trendhopping and selling out can't compare.
Another issue I take is with the song 'Blacker of Worlds'. Many people have commended Demonaz on his bravery in coming out about his childhood sexual abuse... but I'm not sure if these people can remember back to the late 90's/early 00's when nu-metal was all the rage, and whining about child abuse - even manufactured child abuse for the sake of 'trendiness' - was common.
Not that I don't have empathy for Demonaz, but it seems quite disingenuous that he waited until nu-metal was making a popular 'comeback', and thus it being relatively trendy to write lyrics about child abuse, to do so. Almost smacks me of being opportunistic. Either way, the delivery and the whole trendiness presented reduce the impact the lyrical theme would have had, if the song was worth a damn to begin with. Which it isn't.
Bottom line is that if you came of age at the time of or before nu-metal was popular, and thus were subjected to its relentless case of jumpdafuckup 'hey! hey! hey!' bullshit, then you have already heard this album. Every riff, every groove, you've heard it before, and there's nothing original at all about Northern Chaos Gods that you've haven't heard on another nu-metal album.
The 'chaos gods' Demonaz worships aren't Thor, Odin, Baldr and Hel. They are Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, Machine Head and Trapt.
This album will live on in infamy as where Immortal traded their original sound for a straight-faced mockery of an already shitty and creatively devoid style. Avoid this nu-metal crap at all costs, if that's not blatantly obvious already.
Northern Chaos Gods score: 0/100.
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