Emperor: Black Metal's Grandest, Live at Inferno

Sat, 12 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Most black metal wants to sound like a blizzard in a car park. Emperor wanted to sound like a cathedral catching fire. That single ambition, held from a Norwegian mining town in the early nineties, is why they remain the genre’s grandest act three decades on — and why watching them reassemble on a Norwegian stage is such a strange, freighted experience.

Emperor formed in Notodden in 1991, a small industrial town in Telemark with more waterfalls than nightlife. The two constants were Ihsahn — born Vegard Sverre Tveitan — on vocals and guitar, and Samoth, Tomas Haugen, on guitar and later drums. They were teenagers with keyboards and a very serious idea about what heavy music could be. Where most of the early Norwegian scene prized rawness and speed above all, Emperor reached for scale: layered synths, tremolo guitar lines stacked like organ pipes, and a sense of composition that owed as much to Romantic classical music as to Bathory. The result was a sound that felt vast, ceremonial, almost liturgical.

Emperor on vo.rs

Emperor: Black Metal's Grandest, Live at Inferno