“I wake up in the morning, put on my leather jacket and go straight to my guitars.” Immortal guitarist and vocalist Demonaz is talking about his songwriting process for the past 30-plus years. As he tells Apple Music, the system was no different for the Norwegian black-metal legends’ 10th album, War Against All: first the guitars, then the lyrics. “Is this a battle song? Is this a hymn? Is this a song about the walk to the mountain to embrace the cold? You have to be very firm and insisting. It’s like the language of the gods or something,” he says. “But I always want to capture the listener. I want to bring them into the album and make them part of the journey.” As always, Demonaz is conjuring the frozen and fictional kingdom of Blashyrkh, a wintry realm populated by demons and ravens, in which battle rages eternally. “If you listen to Slayer’s Reign in Blood, it’s a journey to hell and back,” he offers. “It’s similar here. In a trip to Blashyrkh, maybe you will survive, maybe not.” Below, he details each song. “War Against All” “With the first song, you have a few minutes to capture the listener. I wanted to have a fast song because, I think, one of the things that I’ve done as a trademark is to make opening songs like ‘One by One’ or ‘All Shall Fall’ or ‘Battles in the North’—like, ‘Let’s go for it.’ It’s like an invitation or ticket to the album. The bass drum goes and never stops, and there’s not too many riffs—just enough to keep you in the Immortal universe. Let’s start a war, but everybody with us.” “Thunders of Darkness” “I’m not going to slow down on the second track. This is a straight follow-up, like ‘Sons of Northern Darkness’ after ‘One by One’ on Sons of Northern Darkness. When I was listening to my favourite bands, like Slayer or early Metallica or Bathory, the first song is very fast, and the second song doesn’t give in. This is probably the most primitive track on the album. Every time I put on the record, I’m glad I put it here.” “Wargod” “This is the heaviest track on the album. I wasn’t thinking of our song ‘Tyrants’ when I wrote the riff, but it certainly has some kind of similarity. This song was really inspired by Celtic Frost, the To Mega Therion album. Celtic Frost had something that no other bands had. They had a kind of above-ness with just three persons. The band was big. The songs sounded very easy to play, but they really are not. When we tried doing covers of Celtic Frost songs at the beginning of the band, that’s how we learned to play.” “No Sun” “It’s actually a song that could be on one of the earlier albums. I wrote a song called ‘The Sun No Longer Rises’ on Pure Holocaust, which we thought was one of the best songs on that album. The inspiration comes a bit from there. It doesn’t sound very modern, I think, except for the production. It’s like classic black metal from that time. It could have been on Pure Holocaust or Battles in the North. A lot of the songs on this album are like that—there’s a red line going back to ’94 or ’95.” “Return to Cold” “This one also seems to go back to ’94 or ’95. It reminds me a bit of ‘Blashyrkh (Mighty Ravendark)’, which became an instant classic. This one has the same mood. You stand on top of the mountain and embrace the cold, the winter, everything. The long-standing Immortal fans will recognise it instantly. It’s the song with the fewest riffs, but it has the most effective ones. I saw one review that said, ‘Return to Cold? What return?’ That was good. I actually had this as the working title for the album, before War Against All.” “Nordlandihr” “There’s a big secret on this one that I didn’t tell anybody, but I’m going to tell you. I once saw an interview with Keith Richards where he was talking about taking the E string off your guitar and then tuning your guitar in G to discover some dark atmosphere. I did that on my old acoustic guitar and created the first riff on this song. I was just instantly inspired by how it sounded. As the song developed, I decided it would be an instrumental, no vocals. It’s about a battle for freedom. It’s a song that would help you up the mountains, if you will. It’s going forward with positive energy. Immortal has never been about negative energy. It’s about freedom in a certain universe.” “Immortal” “This song was originally written back in ’93, ’94. Five years ago, I moved three hours from Bergen, out by the fjords and the mountains, where there’s more wild nature. When I was packing up all my stuff, I had to go through all my notes. Every time I write an album, there’s a lot of stuff I don’t use. But I collect it—I don’t throw it away. So, I found this song—it was half-written, maybe more. I suddenly remembered the riffs, the ideas. It’s a very primitive song, no solos or too many distractions, but it has a way. For me, it’s the most different song on the album.” “Blashyrkh My Throne” “On the first album, there was a song called ‘A Perfect Vision of the Rising Northland’. It was like a hymnal, a long song at the end to close the album. We did that a lot of times—‘Beyond the North Waves’ on Sons of Northern Darkness, ‘Unearthly Kingdom’ on All Shall Fall, ‘Mighty Ravendark’ on Northern Chaos Gods. It’s the same with this one. And it is unmistakably inspired by Bathory’s ‘Blood Fire Death’, but I hope I’m doing it in a respectful way. Without Bathory, there would be no Immortal. With the deepest respect, I hope his spirit lives on in the music that I write.”