Abbath: It was never my intention to go solo

Former Immortal frontman Abbath says he was axed by his ex bandmates “for the wrong reasons.”

Abbath, aka Olve Eikemo, has started a new band under his own name after a failed legal bid to secure rights to the Immortal name last year. The move was blocked by guitarist Harald ‘Demonaz’ Navdal and drummer Reidar ‘Horgh’ Horghagen who are working on material under the Immortal banner.

Now Abbath has opened up on the split. He tells The Music: “I feel like I’ve been fired. It was never my intention to go solo but I really feel like I’ve been forced into it. Apparently they are going to continue on without me and that’s fine - but it was very disappointing that no-one, not even Nuclear Blast, wanted to hear my side of the story.

“The other guys wanted to do things solely on their timetable and also claimed that I need to go to rehab, which was just nonsense because I’ve always delivered, live and in the studio. My plan was to go into the studio last year. If I had my way Immortal would have been on tour right now.”

He adds that it was Demonaz and Horgh who weren’t pulling their weight in Immortal and not the other way round. He says: “I just think they ended up being in it for the wrong reasons. They weren’t showing any passion for what we were doing.

“Even though my new band is called Abbath, it finally feels like I’m in a real band – part of a group of musicians who have a great dialogue and share a passion for the music. It didn’t feel like that in Immortal for a long time.”

Abbath’s debut album will be released in January via Season Of Mist. He recently debuted new track Fenrir Hunts via Metal Hammer.

Abbath: The New Black

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.