White faces scowling out of the darkness, an indecipherable logo, songs about darkness, night, cold, winter, storms, mist, and one called Immortal can mean only one thing. True Norwegian Black Metal comes to Greece. Winterdemons is a new band formed in 2003 in Greece based upon the premise that Immortal did it right back in 1992. Winterdemons is as relevant as Warhammer or Usurper and Immortal is certainly as worthy of the homage as Hellhammer.The Darkest Storm has great atmosphere, great vocals, and competent drumming, certainly the equal of old Immortal recordings in that sense. The production is good and relatively clear. Goulthor enunciates well without sacrificing the harsh Abbath style. The guitars are distinct, the vocals dominate, but the drums are in the background a bit too much. The guitars are not overly repetitive but songs do lack differentiation. It is hard to pick out individual songs after only a few spins, but so what. The speedy parts are good but the slower passages tend to be just a little too repetitive, but so what. After several listens little nuances become apparent. They have done some nice work on song intros, notably “Kill the Whores of Satan” with its nice long slow intro before a growl comes through. I’m not sure why we are killing Satan’s whores, though.
Why is this band relevant? I am a strong believer in tradition. We need new bands to play the traditional music as the old bands fade away. If plainchant could stay a viable music style for 800 years so can metal, but we need new musicians interested in perpetuating the core style. Winterdemons does that with flair, and what better band to emulate than Immortal? For favorite songs I’ll single out “Shadows in the Mist” and “Immortal.”
