Abbath Doom Occulta is the corpse-painted face and venomous voice of black metal in his Norwegian homeland. Born Olve Eikemo, the 45-year-old multi-instrumentalist has famously served as Immortal’s lead vocalist, lyricist, guitarist, bassist, guitarist, keyboardist and drummer.  

An extreme and extremely versatile artist, his eponymous offshoot metal project, Abbath, recently reformed with a fresh lineup and a renewed sense of purpose.  

The aggressive quartet’s current incarnation attacks Abbath’s sophomore effort, Outstrider, with rapid-fire percussion, caustic vocals and power guitar onslaughts. Plunging headlong into the heat of an epic fantasy battle, the album fuses the new wave of heavy metal with rhapsodic melodies and Abbath’s own dark philosophies.  

Delivered with face-flaying ferocity, white-knucklers like “Harvest Pyre,” the wiley “Scythewinder” and wildly imaginative “The Artifex” prove as intricate as they are intense. “Occulta” growls like a lion, pacing between the bars of solid steel and shadowy malice on “Bridge of Spasms,” cheering on the band’s hellish machinations.  

Ominous and oozing with goblinesque screams, “Pace Till Death” hails the flames and traps the audience between inferno and abyss. Wrapping up their harrowing eight-song saga with a pang of nostalgia, Outstrider makes a grand exit with an amped-up cover of Bathory’s “Hecate.” 

MORE REVIEWS

Indistinct Conversations

KiCK i

Beer and Loathing

Rough and Rowdy Ways

Shadow Offering 

Forever + Ever x Infinity

GENE

Planet’s Mad