Mental Retardation - "At the Heart of Winter" Review (0%)
Move aside Blizzard Beasts, here's another shitty Immortal release.
At the Heart of Winter is sometimes referred to as the "best Immortal album" and that might be the case, because Immortal is quite a retarded and talentless band, but the album is still a pile of shit no matter how you choose to judge it.
This album At the Heart of Winter is one of the lamest black metal releases for the one fact that it's a repetitive, sloppy and derivative mess.
It combines all of the worst aspects of modern plastic "black metal" and chooses to never be anything more than a joke.
Abbath's vocals are laughable, the drumming's excited but mindless, the riffs are generic and derivative and the songwriting is pure garbage.
Why do songs abruptly cut off? Why does everything have the exact same pace except the outro? Why does Abbath sound like a sub choking on a dildo? There are so many questions to ask that lead to the big question - why the fuck is this piece of commercial vomit considered black metal at all?
Isn't black metal supposed to have atmosphere, intensity and soul? At the Heart of Winter has none of that.
I guess it isn't as bad as, say, Immortal's latest turd Northern Chaos Gods... but the same could be said for any album of pretty much any genre ever (yes, that includes Justin Bieber).
At the Heart of Winter is commercial mental retardation at its lowest of lows.
Mental Retardation
Immortal's clownish aesthetics aside, this album At the Heart of Winter has very little of substance to show.
There's a blend of the identical sounding riffs for over half the album, and it gets ridiculously tedious when you realize that there are no hooks or variations to keep you interested, and that the riffs are pretty generic to begin with.
The monotonous, flood-like temperament of At the Heart of Winter would be somewhat excusable and even redeemable in some ways had there been any competent writing behind it. I mean, it's not like minimalist black metal isn't a thing... see Transilvanian Hunger or Nekros Nemesis for good examples.
What do those album have that At the Heart of Winter lacks? I don't know, maybe start with atmosphere, harmonies, some eclectic leads, ambient passages, more than a few distinct riffs instead of the sharp buzz of cheaply distorted guitars, and someone behind the drum kit that can actually do anything other than blitzy bonks. Abbath's drumming sucks so bad behind those stammering triggered double bass queues and clowny snare hits that it makes you wonder, again, if it isn't a particularly shitty drum machine.
Anything that's just BRRRRRRRR-ing guitars and TUNGATUNGATUNGATUNGA mid-paced blasting is going to lack both atmosphere and personality.
The worst is Abbath's vocals, which actually make you question whether the whole thing is some not-so-elaborate parody of black metal destined to make 1) money and 2) fun of Abbath's mentally challenged fanbase.
This isn't some personal attack on Abbath because of his transparent gayness, his manufactured image of "true Viking warrior" or his pathological lying about his involvement in the black metal inner circle. I am bashing this turd of an album for its lack of variety, poor execution, and laughable nature.
At the Heart of Winter is the epitome of mental retardation, it literally sounds like something a retard with no concept of musical integrity or songwriting would compose if you gave him a guitar, a drum kit and a mic. Forget the drum kit actually, the whole album sounds like some gay dude banging his dildo on his mother's cooking pots, which I am sure is not so far from the truth.
What a shame shit like Immortal gets called black metal nowadays.
At the Heart of Winter score: 0/100.
Support the Underground
