Year Of Metal #023: Emperor - In The Nightside Eclipse
When it comes to black metal - your proper, bottled at the source Norwegian black metal - you’ve got to be a bit careful. Emperor are a band with a “Controversy” stem on their Wikipedia page, and it’s your usual stuff for the most part - church burning, Satanism. More problematically, drummer Faust committed a murder that seems to have been almost certainly inspired by homophobia (though he has disputed this and expressed remorse since), which it goes without saying is a bit of a blemish on a band.
With that out of the way, 1994’s In The Nightside Eclipse is, it must be said, an exceptional bit of work. It’s filed under symphonic black metal, and that symphonic stuff makes such a difference. They set out to challenge right away with opener “Into The Infinity Of Thoughts”, the first couple of minutes of which take the listener to the limit. Band leader Ihsahn’s vocals are shrill, shredded and throaty, the drums relentless, the guitars almost stripped of melody. Push past that, though, and you start to pick out the hopeful hum of keyboards - real light at the end of the tunnel stuff. At the halfway mark, the song turns into a fantastical battle march of sorts. It’s the soundtrack of every twisted creature of fantasy storming into war. It’s quasi-camp, in a joyful manner.
From there, it’s like you’ve passed Emperor’s test, and while the album’s harsh and abrasive throughout, it never feels like noise for the sake of it. In The Nightside Eclipse is an exercise in textures. There’s little complicated to the music technically speaking, but the pieces are put together with real care and consideration. For music with such sharp edges, it’s remarkable how inviting it is to listen closely. “Beyond The Great Vast Forest” is a standout, a layer cake of a song. Everything occupies its strata, the drums at the bottom, cutting guitars in the middle, pristine keys at the top and the snarling vocals above the lot.
They throw a bone to lovers of more conventional metal at times, too. “Cosmic Keys To My Creations And Times” packs a killer riff at the start, almost thrash-like. Instrumentally it’s Emperor at their clearest and most precise, with fun sequences in which keys and guitars interact and the intensity ramped up by way of stop-start dynamics rather than the pure snarling noise they use elsewhere (though there is plenty of noise on this one, too).
“I Am The Black Wizards” goes a step further, sounding like classic heavy metal blown out to the max. The track is studded with that classic metal technique where everyone plays something at the same time, driven by the crash cymbal (I’m sure there’s a name for this but I can’t even figure out what to Google - like the start of “Master Of Puppets”). By the midpoint, they’re downright swinging.
It doesn’t surprise me that In The Nightside Eclipse has stood the test of time in its genre and remains a key text for so many metal acts who followed. It’s an album that demands close attention and stands up to inspection. Everything folds together beautifully and the simple addition of quite lush keyboards to an otherwise bleak soundscape elevates it immensely. Just a shame about the arson and the murder.
