Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult

by Dayal Patterson

  Working as a four-piece, the rejuvenated outfit forged a new sound that retained the symphonic and orchestral overtones of the earlier material but channeled them in a distinctly different emotional direction. A definite statement of intent, the atmosphere that accompanied the new material was now focused less on awe, darkness, and mystery, and more on bombast, power, and grandeur. Confident with the quality of their writings, the group wasted no time, recording again with producer Pytten as soon as Samoth was available to do so.

  “By the time that I was out on parole, in the summer of ’96, we had quite a bit of material and a lot of willpower and energy to get going,” remembers Samoth. “It was right into the rehearsal room, and by the end of the year we were already in Grieghallen recording and had our first music video that Fall.”

  This music video—which featured the group sans corpsepaint—would accompany the song “The Loss and Curse of Reverence,” the title track of an EP released with much fanfare in the cold October of 1996. Issued both on CD and a limited run of seven and twelve-inch formats (incidentally the first vinyl this then CD-devouring writer ever bought), it further fueled the hunger for a follow-up to Nightside. Accompanied by a neo-classical synth reworking of “Inno A Satana” and a “new” song, “In Longing Spirit”—a memorable and dynamic effort that recalled the band’s earlier efforts, perhaps unsurprisingly since it had been originally written in 1992—“Reverence” would set the tone for the second album, Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk. An aural hurricane, the album showcased an intense and high-paced musical assault that relied far more heavily on double bass blasting than before, complimenting these percussive bombardments with dreamy and almost whimsical synth-based passages and frantic solos.

  A newly regenerated Emperor in 1996: Trym, Alver, Samoth and Ihsahn.

  Photo: Runhild Gammelsæter

  “They already had several of the songs almost done when I joined,” Trym remembers. “The basic ideas for the drums were made, but they also gave me the freedom to try different things. Fortunately Anthems fitted my style of drumming much better that Nightside, so it wasn’t difficult for me to approach the new material.”

  “The change of drummer impacted the sound a bit,” adds Samoth. “With Trym we incorporated some full-on blast beat parts to several of the songs, which created more contrasts in the structures.”

  Released in the summer of 1997, and featuring “The Loss and Curse …” smack bang at its center, Anthems certainly proved a very different record than its predecessor. Furiously high-tempo for the most part, the song structures were just as twisting, yet numbers such as “Ye Entrancemperium” (whose intro riff was written by none other than Euronymous) proved far less brooding than earlier efforts, instead propelling themselves forward with so much vigor that the whole thing feels like it might derail at any moment. Frantic yet carefully controlled, the album is almost a symphonic take on the spirit of Wrath, but with an added swagger, the synths now emulating horned instruments as well as strings, resulting in a knowingly pompous and ceremonial atmosphere that perfectly compliments the band’s moniker.

  An unusually shaped flyer for Emperor’s return to London in 1997, incidentally the first live show in the capital your author ever attended.

  “As with any Emperor release, it was an evolutionary step really,” considers Samoth. “Anthems was possibly the first recording where we got a bit more progressive and took a real step further into the more complex Emperor soundscape. It was also the first album where we actually incorporated some death metal influences, something that was more noticeable on [follow-up] IX Equilibrium. Compared to Nightside, Anthems has more interesting things happening on the guitars I think, and it’s not so layered by keyboard atmospheres at all times. Altogether a very strong album and it has a lot of fighting spirit, struggle, and emotion in it.”

  Though some listeners mourned the loss of the more mystical overtones of the debut album, the record was warmly received by much of the metal scene, and despite the progressive, classically leaning synth passages, its more aggressive sound made it more accessible to fans of other extreme metal genres such as death metal. Sales and reviews were positive, with the band picking up “album of the year” in Terrorizer alongside other accolades, and the group’s tour of the album saw them visiting a number of respectably sizable venues.

  Indeed, it seemed that the band were finally capitalizing on the creative achievements of the previous years, and the overall impression was one of confidence, the self-empowering lyrics mirrored by a record’s sleeve that features the band members sitting upon thrones (the same throne actually) with the tagline ‘Emperor performs Sophisticated Black Metal Art exclusively!’.

  “The Anthems period was great for us,” confirms Samoth. “We had really strong songs, we were very eager to build our band and we were finally heading back out on the road again as it had been around three or four years since our last show. As far as our musical direction, it was all a very natural evolution. We became better musicians and more confident songwriters, and really found something that was more unique as a sound.”

  The band’s next release, issued two years later, would prove the most left-field of their career. Released on Thorn’s label Moonfog, the Emperor Vs. Thorns split saw both bands offering a mixture of new and reworked songs as well as covers of one another’s material, Emperor tackling Thorns’ best-known number “Ærie Descent” while the Norwegian pioneers waded in with an inventive cover of “Cosmic Keys.”

  Anthems To The Welkin At Dusk saw a shift in image, with the band abandoning corpsepaint and appearing as you see them here in the video for “The Loss and Curse of Reverence.” Photo: Morten Andersen.

  A strange and disjointed offering, the album is nonetheless not an entirely unrewarding one. The industrial bent of Thorns seems to have rubbed off on Emperor, and alongside the Thorns cover is “Exordium,” a tense martial/industrial instrumental, as well as an electronic number entitled “I Am” that samples earlier songs by the group as well as “Fall” by Thorns. Also included is another classical synth reworking, this time a strangely jaunty rendition of “Thus Spake the Nightspirit” from Anthems, which like “Exordium” and “I Am” was predominantly created by Ihsahn in his Symphonique studio.

  “I believe it was presented as an idea by Satyr,” recalls Samoth, who met Thorns mainman Snorre Ruch while incarcerated. “We thought it could be a cool collaboration and decided to give it a go. I’ve always had a lot of respect for Thorns and Snorre’s way of composing and playing. I do still count him as one of my musical inspirations. Anyway, the Thorns Vs. Emperor album wasn’t such a big period for us, and not something we spent a lot of time on.”

  Only a few months later came the real follow-up to Anthems, namely third album IX Equilibrium. Like the band’s “Ærie Descent” cover, it was recorded and mixed at Akkerhaugen Lydstudio (and co-produced by owner Thorbjørn Akkerhaugen, who had played alongside Ihsahn and Samoth in Thou Shalt Suffer). This time the band built upon the style showcased on Anthems, namely a fast-paced, dense, technical sound with orchestral flourishes and an indisputably in-your-face approach. Once again, much emphasis was put upon the conceptual content of the lyrics, which marked something of a turning point, as vocalist Ihsahn explains:

  “Without suggesting any great philosophical weight to this album, the title IX Equilibrium touches on the alchemical concepts of aspiring and finding balance on a higher level. This is further expressed in ‘An Elegy of Icaros,’ idolizing a mythical figure who ‘broke out’ and fell, but where the will to aspire overshadows the outcome. However, looking back I also see how the album is not only taking opposition to ‘normal society’ (as is so often the case with metal), but also breaking away from the shallowness, hypocrisy, and conservative forces among the ‘collective of outsiders’ that every underground scene seems to acquire when they start setting the rules for their collective. This is clearly pointed out in ‘Curse You all Men!,’ which questions the genuine qualities ben
eath all the image. A third aspect of this album is also self-criticism, questioning one’s own authority and motives, like in ‘Of Blindness and Subsequent Seers,’ though this comes forth more on [next album] Prometheus. All in all I think IX marks a turning point away from the more traditional black metal expression and points to the more introvert and experimental [fourth album] Prometheus.”

  Though the stylistic evolution was more gentle this time around, IX was a pivotal recording. The group largely discarded a sinister atmosphere to pursue more complex and progressive songwriting, while adding elements of heavy metal and death metal. The former was apparent in the more melodic and even anthemic moments on the album, such as the opener “Curse You All Men!” and hopelessly catchy “Warriors of Modern Death,” not to mention the occasionally falsetto vocals, which took fans by surprise. The death metal elements were equally contentious, since the two scenes were still fairly divided, though in comparison to the late nineties shift of, say, countrymen Gehenna, these overtones were actually fairly subtle.

  “By this time we had a lot more experience as a live band and that affected the way we wrote new songs,” states Samoth. “With IX Equilibrium we yet again developed our sound and added both more death metal elements, as well as more progressive elements. Emperor was never a band that was afraid to add new elements, so we never thought of it being risky to add death metal elements, we already had some on Anthems, and we’d always been fans of Morbid Angel. We had also grown very tired of this separation issue between death and black metal.” He adds, “I guess this is where it became clearer that Ihsahn and I had started to grow in different directions.”

  These diverging musical impulses would, in many respects, bring an end to the band. For his part, Ihsahn was now moving far more intensely toward the experimental and progressive end of the extreme metal spectrum, something that would become apparent with the self-titled solo albums that appeared from 2006 onward. The frontman was clearly already expanding his musical options from the end of the nineties onward, resurrecting Thou Shalt Suffer as a solo neoclassical project and performing in the experimental metal band Peccatum with his wife Ihriel and brother-in-law Lord PZ, vocalist of black metal outfit Source of Tide.

  Samoth, on the other hand, increasingly focused upon the death metal roots that had surfaced within Emperor, leading him and Trym to form the band Zyklon with members of death metal outfit Myrkskog in 1998. Playing death metal with black metal and industrial overtones, the band’s lyrics were contributed by ex-Emperor sticksman Faust, and they would issue their debut World Ov Worms in 2001, the same year as the final Emperor album, Prometheus: The Discipline of Fire & Demise. Written entirely by Ihsahn (who not only produced but also provided the majority of guitar, all the vocals, bass, synth, and programming), it unsurprisingly leans heavily toward a more progressive extreme metal sound.

  Men in black: promo photo circa Prometheus: The Discipline of Fire & Demise in 2001.

  Photo: Sebastian Ludvigsen

  Emperor’s first reunion tour in 2006. The second would take place some eight years later.

  Photo: Shi Bradley/Midnyte Photography.

  “At this point it was already clear to us that this would be our last album,” explains Samoth. “Our last show was at the end of ’99, and since then Emperor was never really a functional band anymore. I started to prepare what became Zyklon and put a lot of effort into getting that going. By the time we started recording Prometheus I was ready to hit the road with Zyklon, so Prometheus ended up being ‘the Ihsahn album.’ It was a different process than all the other albums, where it had been a strong group effort. On Prometheus there were no proper rehearsals, even Trym rehearsed most of the material on his own with click tracks, and the rest we all learned in the studio during the recording process really. I’m proud of that album too, no doubt, but it’s the album that means the least to me as I was not so emotionally or creatively involved in it.”

  “I got a CD from Ihsahn with all the songs programmed with a click and a piano sound,” recalls Trym, “so it was very difficult at that point for me to get a feeling of how this album would sound in the end. So I rehearsed on my own, trying to get the essence of every theme and do what I felt was the right way to go. Before we went in the studio, Ihsahn and I had one rehearsal where we went over most parts, to be on the same page. I also used the same click and piano track when I recorded this album, which made it more difficult to get in the ‘zone.’ I would do some parts quite differently today, when I have all the information of how the final results turned out.”

  Though unconventional, the album was both commercially successful and critically acclaimed, even earning the band a cover story in Kerrang!, something that seemed unimaginable even a few years before. Despite this, the record was never toured and the band split up the same year. This was not the end, however, as Emperor would reform in 2006 and 2014 to play a string of large and highly successful concerts, demonstrating just how wide the band’s appeal had become, having traded their early danger for a surprising sense of respectability.

  Emperor has continued to be a name held in the utmost regard, their unique and technical approach to composition proving somewhat unwieldy for the bands who followed (compared to Mayhem, Darkthrone, and Burzum, it’s interesting to note how few groups have attempted to cover or take direct influence from their back catalogue) but no less popular. All the same, despite hopes that the group would record a new album, the members instead pressed on with their separate projects, Ihsahn continuing his solo work and playing with Ihriel in a folk/metal collaboration called Hardingrock, and Samoth pressing on with not only Zyklon, but also Scum (a “deathpunk” project featuring Faust, Happy Tom of Turbonegro, and Casey Chaos of Amen) and later The Wretched End. An extreme metal band taking inspirations from death, black, and thrash metal, this acclaimed outfit sees Samoth playing alongside Cosmocrator (Scum, Source of Tide, and Zyklon) and Swede Nils Fjellström, known for drumming in bands such as In Battle, Aeon, and Dark Funeral.

  “I can’t deny that I wish we could have kept Emperor going,” concludes Samoth. “But at that time it felt like the right thing to split the band. We were sort of pulling in different directions and had different feelings and visions for what we wanted to do as a band, both musically and with touring. Rather than making too many compromises, we decided to end the band while the spirit was still there. Might sound like a hasty decision, but it was just one of those things. We knew we had built something strong with the Emperor name and wanted to keep that integrity and spirit intact. In retrospect we really did, as Emperor as an entity became even bigger after our split I think. I’m very grateful and proud for all the things we did accomplish with the band, especially when I think back to how we first started and how we built our entity from nothing in the middle of rural Norway, to becoming an international act and one of the key bands in the extreme metal movement. Emperor has been, and in a way still is, a big part of my life.”

  24

  GEHENNA

  “Back in the day when I was doing my label Head Not Found, Gehenna was one of the first bands I really dealt seriously with and I’m still very proud to have released the First Spell mini-CD. Of course they progressed to what others say is greater things, and … I’m happy to see the band left a very interesting catalogue … Gehenna really didn’t do any bad albums.”

  —Jon “Metalion” Kristiansen (Slayer Magazine)

  DESPITE HAILING FROM the black metal hotbed of early-nineties Norway, the appearance of Gehenna’s 1993 demo Black Seared Heart took many by surprise. A remarkably impressive effort, the twenty-minute opus was the product of a group that had not only formed less than half a year before, but had very little connection with the rest of the country’s burgeoning scene. However, despite the fact that the band had only begun in January 1993, the musicians within Gehenna had been playing extreme metal—and, in the case of some members, taking part in distinctly anti-Christian activities—for some time prior. Created by Steff
en “Dolgar” Simenstad and Morten “Sanrabb” Furuly, both guitarists and vocalists, the initial lineup was completed thanks to Sir Vereda, who took on the role of drummer.

  “Sanrabb and I have known each other since about the age of twelve, when my family moved from Oslo to Stavanger,” explains Dolgar. “He actually started out in another band called Incarnator for a few months before me and him started our band, though this band became a one-man project before long. Not unlike other Norwegian bands, our first outfit Inanimate—the two of us and a bassist named Robert—had a more death-metal approach to the music but nothing was ever recorded, and we pretty soon parted ways with Robert. This was around ’91–’92. We both wanted another musical direction, and we also started working with Sir Vereda—we knew him from school but had gotten to know him better by that time. Early 1993 we decided on the name Gehenna, and the music evolved into the direction you can hear on Black Seared Heart. We were only sixteen/seventeen years old at that time.”

  Dark and aggressive, but dripping with atmosphere and class, the recording steered away from the murky, violent, and fast-paced territories the band’s peers were exploring at the time. Instead Black Seared Heart showcased a collection of melancholic and surprisingly considered compositions that highlighted melody above all, through a combination of memorable riffs, professional production, and some of the heaviest use of synths then seen in black metal.

  The tape itself was limited to a mere hundred copies, but a seven-inch entitled Ancestor of the Dark Sky—the debut release of Dutch label Necromantic Gallery Productions—followed, showcasing four tracks from the demo.