The title said it all: Between Two Worlds. That was the name of the sole album by I, the Norwegian black-metal supergroup, and it served as a fitting description of the band's direction. On November 3, 2006, the record landed on Nuclear Blast, making the split official.
Two men, two roles
The two worlds belonged to two men. Abbath, the vocalist and guitarist known from Immortal, composed all the music and handled the arrangements. Demonaz, his former bandmate from that group, penned every lyric. Yet, the sound they forged together wasn't the freezing, blastbeat-heavy black metal that brought Immortal fame. It was heavy metal—direct and proud—with classic metal influences front and center.
Abbath handled much of the heavy lifting himself: singing, playing guitar, and shaping the arrangements, while Ice Dale recorded guitar parts and received producer credit. T.S. King played bass, Armagedda anchored the drums, and the whole thing was captured at Lydriket Studio in 2006. Peter Tägtgren mixed the record at Abyss, giving it a clean, hard edge. The studio work involved a team beyond the core lineup. Geir Luedy and Herbrand Larsen managed the recording engineering, and Kristian Tvedt edited the material. Thomas Erberger mastered the final record, and Martin Kvamme designed the cover art. Håkon Grav of Photograve management looked after the band's business.
Tracklist and running times
The tracklist felt like a call to arms. Songs like The Storm I Ride, Warriors, Battalions, Mountains, Days of North Winds, and Cursed We Are showed little interest in atmosphere or icy mystery. The title track, Between Two Worlds, clocked in at five minutes and fifty-two seconds, but it felt built for a fist raised in triumph rather than a solitary walk through a forest. The album's total runtime was forty-two minutes and thirty-six seconds. The record also allowed for longer, more patient pieces. Far Beyond the Quiet extended past seven minutes, and the bonus track Bridges of Fire ran even longer. These extended cuts lent the record a different kind of weight, letting the riffs breathe without sacrificing the directness that defined the project.
That was the risk. Fans who came to I expecting Immortal's grim, wintry onslaught encountered something warmer and more traditional. While the record remained filed under black metal and heavy metal, the classic metal influence was no longer a mere seasoning—it was the main focus. For Abbath, it was an opportunity to showcase a more straightforward metal style than the one that had made him known.
The label clearly backed the project. A limited digipak edition included three bonus tracks: Bridges of Fire, Shadowed Realms (Intro), and Shadowed Realms. There was also a metal box, limited to one thousand copies, featuring the same three extra songs. Collectors had a reason to hunt, and the band had more space to expand beyond the main eight tracks. The record hasn't been shelved. It remains accessible through streaming services, allowing new listeners to discover it.
Twenty years later, the album persists as a singular, curious artifact. I never released another record. The musicians returned to their separate paths, and Between Two Worlds stands as the sole document of what occurred when some of Norway's most extreme metal musicians chose to play it straight. What could have been a side project became a small monument to a different impulse: not to push deeper into darkness, but to ride the storm in broad daylight.