Caine Blackthorn
Norwegian black metal institution Immortal has officially completed the writing process for its next studio album – the follow-up to 2023’s War Against All.
On April 19, founding guitarist and vocalist Harald Nævdal (Demonaz) delivered a brief but telling update:
“Greetings, hordes! The writing of the next IMMORTAL album is finished. The new material follows our steady path of fast riff-powered Blashyrkh metal. More news will follow!”
Translation: no reinvention, just the frozen, relentless identity they’ve been sharpening for decades.
IMMORTAL’s trajectory has never been clean. Formed in 1990 by Demonaz and Olve Eikemo (Abbath), the band helped define Norway’s early black metal movement before splintering through lineup changes and internal fractures. Drummer Reidar Horghagen joined in 1996, cementing what many fans consider the classic era.
Since then, IMMORTAL has moved through legal disputes, personal distance, and the kind of long-term tension that tends to follow bands that survive past the 30-year mark. The name itself became a battleground more than once but ultimately remained with the band as a collective entity rather than any single member.
Demonaz addressed those past conflicts in 2023 with a tone that felt less like resolution and more like exhaustion:
“Not every marriage is a happy marriage.” And that’s probably the most honest summary you’re going to get.
As for where things stand now, there’s no talk of reunions, no attempt to rewrite history. Just forward motion.
The last record, Northern Chaos Gods (2018), proved IMMORTAL could still operate without Abbath. War Against All doubled down on that identity. And now, with a new album fully written, the band seems locked into its current form, cold, focused, and uninterested in compromise.
No release date or tracklist yet. Just riffs. Fast ones. And if you know IMMORTAL, that’s exactly how it should be.
