Immortal "At the Heart of Winter"

At the Heart of Winter is the fifth studio album by Norwegian black metal band Immortal. It was released on 28 February 1999 through Osmose Productions. It is the first Immortal album not to feature Demonaz on guitar, as he suffered from acute tendinitis in his hands. The album marks a shift in Immortal's musical sound, towards a black metal and thrash metal fusion.

At the Heart of Winter was recorded in November 1998 at Abyss Studios in Sweden. It is the first Immortal album not to feature a picture of the band on the cover, and the first to prominently feature the band's new logo. Cover art was painted by J.P. Fournier.

In addition to a CD release, At the Heart of Winter was released as a limited edition metal box, as well as a hand-numbered LP on Osmose, which was later reissued in 2005.

At the Heart of Winter was well received by critics. John Serba of Allmusic praised the album, writing, "the result is a clarity and focus that few purveyors of the genre succeeded at finding, a painstakingly organized assemblage of black metal's base elements into a disciplined purity of metal that prefers the power of the almighty riff, instead of the occasionally overblown classical structuring of much-lauded stalwarts Emperor and Cradle of Filth, or the strange experimentation that Mayhem and Arcturus would undertake".

Black/blue picture CD with white lettering. Neither title nor tracklist are printed on the disc.

Warning - Osmose CD presses from February 2001 up to around 2005 may contain a copy-protection method which renders the CD completely unreadable in PCs and certain modern Hi-Fi systems. This isn't indicated anywhere on the packaging.


2005: Vinyl re-issue on Osmose limited to 1000 copies.

Recorded in the "Abyss" studios, Sweden during november 1998.