Ihsahn – The Adversary

Black metal scream! YEEEEEEAAAAAAARGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH

I dig this because it reminds me of a statue I saw in Iowa one night. (Asterisk).

WHO?

In the early 1990s, a few bands in Norway took the fastest, angriest, loudest guitary-est music of the current day, which came out of a few metal bands of the 1980s, and mixed it with ghoulish face paint and costume, espousal of violence and anti-Christianity, and shrieked throat-tearing vocals, and that was black metal. Out of this “second wave” of black metal ” was a band called Emperor. Emperor was formed by two men: Vegard Sverre Tveitan, guitarist/singer, and Tomas Thormodsæter Haugen, drummer and later guitarist. Things got very complicated for Emperor for a time. Their first bass player, “Mortiis”, ended up transforming into a goblin and making dark synthesizer-heavy pop; Mr. Haugen, also known as “Samoth”, was eventually arrested for burning down a church and jailed for 16 months, and their second drummer “Faust” killed a man in a forest in 1992 and was put in jail for it until 2003. Nevertheless, with a few lineup changes, Samoth and Mr. Tveitan continued to produce three popularly and critically revered black metal albums, which I can say are some of the angriest, most sweepingly savage blasts of music you may ever have the (dis?)pleasure to hear. By 2001, however, Mr. Tveitan had grown less interested in black metal proper, looking to bring in more disparate/symphonic influences, and had been busy with several side projects, including the band Zyklon-B and a project involving classical and gothic musical influences, called Peccatum, that Mr. Tveitan formed with his wife Heidi, who took the stage name “Ihriel”. Emperor disbanded, and the members formed new projects.

Which is all to say that these people tend to work a lot. This and this would be good places to start if you wanted a closer look at the black metal scene and its various members and craziness, including yet another convicted murderer who has been recently released (several times!) under Norway’s remarkably forgiving justice system. Mr. Tveitan, a skilled multi-instrumentalist and singer, may have composed the entirety of Emperor’s final album with no input from Samoth, but his first album as a billed solo artist only came along in 2006. And this is it.

Oh right, and he calls himself Ihsahn. He’s 34 years old, loved in his Norwegian hometown, and plays everything but drums, which he programs electronically and then assigns to a technically skilled drummer to duplicate. This is him!

WHAT?

“The Adversary” is Ihsahn’s first solo album, and while on his next two he branches out musically even more  (at one point using a saxophone player for most of an album, which is not exactly “metal”), this one is a fine example of what Ihsahn’s about stylistically. This is progressive metal, and while there are the standbys of certain common vocal and instrumentally distorted qualities to it, it’s  there’s no real conventional song structure, five minute songs at the average; there’s lots of double bass drumming like PUKAPUKAPUKAPUKAPUKAPUKA; there’s brakes-slammed tempo and dynamic changes; a mixture of “harsh” vocals (where he’s raspily screaming the lyrics like he’s about to conjure the Antichrist during a lightning storm), more melodic and dramatically cried vocals reminiscent of Rob Halford, or “clean” vocals which are melodic and often overdubbed to make for a choral effect (Ihsahn’s clean voice is not an amazing one, but is clear and very well recorded and arranged and layered for effect). Instrumentally, Ihsahn plays every instrument but drums; as indicated before, those rather breakneck and complicated arrangments, as well as the drums on Ihsahn’s subsequent 2 albums, are played by a man named Asgeir Mickelson; wait, where was I.

New paragraph. Anyway, there’s lots of bravado guitar work, overdubs on top of overdubs and technically demanding solo work. This man can play the shit out of a lead guitar; he shreds, he soars, he plays multiple lines in close harmony like Brian May of Queen. He adds a fair amount of epic sweeping synthesizer as well as mannered piano, the latter especially on “Citizen” which pauses completely halfway through for a solo plinking piano and a lonely fuzzy guitar, and “The Pain Is Still Mine”, the final track, a 10-minute suite of strings, falsetto, crashing chords, and operatic vocal choruses; it’s one of the most impressive tracks on the album. Lyrically: the album’s first track “Invocation” starts like this: “Come suffering, Apocalypse/Release the fires of Hell/I call upon destruction and despair/Here the days of slumber end/I beckon the night to live and overcome the fear”. Pretty heavy stuff, and it keeps on going, track to track: “Every day I grow more immune to social sedatives/Every day the web is more transparent”, “United in fear/Lives hard to bear/Illusions that we are all peers”…dramatic, dark, apocalyptic, intense, misanthropic, take your pick. But all is not darkness! “Called By The Fire”  drops a jazzy 7/4 guitar-and-falsetto section in among metal-ballad choruses, “Homecoming” begins with complex riffs that slip into ringing guitar figures. What you need to keep in mind about this album is that while it takes generously from “technical metal”, focused as it is on technique and musicianship, and it cranks up the distortion on every track, the quieter and/or cleaner sections point to Ihsahn’s interest in the orchestral, the lushness over the rawness, dynamics over blasting. The nimble guitar work, and the melodic sensibilities, mean that these songs often sonically sacrifice “heavy” for “full”. Even the harsh vocals are completely understandable, you can make out every lyric.

WHY?

Ihsahn’s an incredibly gifted musician. If you’re shying away from metal because you find it socially or musically distasteful, then you’ve come to the right place. My good friend and de facto metal guru Bob, who introduced me to Emperor on a hazy ride home from the local pizza parlor, defined it as such: “If he was in any other field of music, everyone would be revering him as a musical prodigy.” The great thing about “The Adversary” is that it’s simultaneously complex and simple; complex musically and instrumentally, and simple in its lyrical message and attitude. You can air-guitar the shit out of these songs, or put them through a pair of headphones and imagine two goblin armies fighting it out to say, “Astera Ton Proinon”. They can pump you up or spread you out mentally. And this is a great introduction to one of the more musically gifted members of the black metal scene, and one who isn’t currently or formerly in jail for arson or murder. People who’d do right by their own selves to check this out include:

1) Guitarists! So much soloing here.

2) Those in a dark mood. I first heard this album on a solitary walk away from a train station across the shockingly quiet city of New Haven, and boy did it wake me up.

3) Fans of progressive rock and metal who want a new target of appreciation/confusion. Also, new fans of metal who want an album that goes from heavy to ballad to

4) People looking to practice their harsh-vocal listening skills (as I said, very clearly recorded. Not all black metal is, however.)

5) My dad. He likes Dream Theater, he’ll probably respect this if not like it.

6) Dream Theater fans. You all know who you are.

AND FOR ALL YOU FUCK-THAT-NOISE FRANCAS OUT THERE…

Don’t think of it as “too loud”, “just noise”, or any of those other bullshit objections that people give to metal. We’ve all known darkness, we’ve all known anger, and your brain and ears can sort through the Chinese puzzle-boxes of riffs and time signature changes on its own, you just need to give it the slightest of chances.

Here is “Will You Love Me Now”, and here is “Called By The Fire”. Turn up those speakers! It’s not working until something vibrates so much it breaks!

And here’s “Invocation”.

(Asterisk).

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