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ancient-qveen · 14 days ago

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EMPEROR in Decibel magazine issue no. 14 (December 2005)

The making of Emperor’s In the Nightside Eclipse

[…] Released from prison in December 2002 after serving nine years and four months’ time, Faust joins fellow ex-Emperors Samoth, Ihsahn (guitar/ vocals/keys) and Tchort (bass) on the eve of a sudden Emperor reunion (featuring Samoth, Ihsahn and longtime Emperor drummer Trym) to recount the making of one of the most historically fascinating and sonically influential albums in the annals of extreme metal…

[ancient-qveen: This is one of my fav emperor interviews and so i've just personally highlighted some stuff in blue for me to look back on. And i've just highlighted their names in red and added a couple pictures to help break up the huge walls of text :3 enjoy]

What are your most vivid memories of the recording sessions for In the Nightside Eclipse?

Faust: There were a lot of practical things we had to organize, because Bergen is like 500 kilometers from Oslo, and we were very young at the time, and we didn’t really know how to organize ourselves. But we managed to get hold of a car and we managed to actually get an apartment in Bergen. The car we used was from Samoth’s father, and I was the only one who had a driving license.

Ihsahn: For me personally, it was kind of a turning point. We had recorded demos before, and also the first Emperor EP, but that was in a very cheap studio. This time we went to Bergen and Grieghallen, and recorded in a big studio with an experienced sound engineer and everything. I was only 17 at the time, so I couldn’t get into the pubs, and since I had to do the guitars and the vocals and all the keyboards, I spent a lot of time in that studio. When the other guys finished their parts, they could always go to the local rock pub and hang out. I’d generally been very interested in sound engineering, and because I couldn’t get into the pubs, I’d spend my nights with Pytten, the engineer, learning about recording and studio technology.

Tchort: I remember Varg Vikernes walking around the studio in his chain mail eating ice cream. I had just turned 19 and was starting to drink coffee for the first time. Grieghallen was huge—the drums were set up in a big hall and that’s where I recorded the bass as well. Before, I had only been inside a small basement studio, and this was a hall where big orchestras could be recorded live.

Samoth: I had just turned 19 that summer, and I remember Bård and I terrorizing the Bergen neighborhoods in my dad’s old Ford Econovan. [Laughs] We had a lot of fun during those weeks, but also a lot of work. We were quite inexperienced as far as being in the studio, and this was really the first big recording for any of us. There were some magic musical moments in the studio, for sure, but I don’t remember too many concrete incidents from the actual studio session. I remember more about the time, the atmosphere and the total rebellious freedom I felt back then.

Were all the songs completely written beforehand, or were parts improvised in the studio?

Ihsahn: Oh, yes, we’ve always had all the material ready before we go into the studio. I would say it was pretty well rehearsed. We never booked time before we were actually finished writing the songs.

Samoth: The song structures were all done, but a lot of the symphonic keyboard parts were actually made in the studio. We didn’t have a keyboard player at the time, so we never rehearsed with keyboards prior to the recording. Of course, certain parts we already had planned the keyboard lines for, and some riffs were made with keyboard lines in mind to begin with, but the overall symphonic and atmospheric layering on Nightside was pretty much composed by Ihsahn during the recording session.

Tchort: As far as I remember, most of the material was written beforehand, but the intro for the song “Towards the Pantheon” was made during our stay in the apartment next to the studio.

The album was co-produced by Pytten, who also produced Mayhem’s De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas and the first Burzum albums. What was he like?

Ihsahn: He was the sound engineer at Grieghallen Studios, and still is, as far as I know. He also recorded several Immortal and Enslaved albums. Grieghallen came to be the studio where everybody recorded their first black metal albums. But Pytten wasn’t a metal guy at all—he was just a very good sound engineer. He used to work for Norwegian television, as a host on a youth program. He’s a very nice guy and a very skilled guy, socially. He related very well to all these extreme types— all these young black metallers who were coming in. He took it very seriously.

Faust: I have only good memories about him. He was very well educated in his work, and very relaxed. In the past, Grieghallen wasn’t one of my favorite studios, but I think he put a trademark sound on each recording—a very organic and dynamic sound. I think he was a part of getting the right sound for In the Nightside Eclipse. At the time, he was already famous in Norway as a musician— in the ’80s he was in a band called Blind Date. His daughter is one of the most famous handball players in Norway now—she’s a very known icon for sports, and I think she was voted most sexy female in a magazine back in 2002 or something. We met her, because she would always drop by the studio when bands were recording there. I think she was maybe a year or two younger than us.

Tchort: Everyone seemed to “know” Pytten from a TV show he used to be on, but I didn’t recognize him. He was cool to work with, kinda relaxed. I remember he didn’t like the bass I brought, so I borrowed one of his for the recording. I don’t think his bisexual daughter was into handball—or at least not known—back then, as she was probably only 15 or 16 at the time.

Five of the songs on Nightside actually have the word “Emperor” in the lyrics. Did you think of Emperor as a character, or was it purely self-referential?

Ihsahn: [Laughs] I didn’t realize that. You know, I can’t really remember all that was put into the lyrics at that time, because some of them are mixed with stuff that Mortiis wrote before he left the band. He wrote lyrics for “I Am the Black Wizards” and “Cosmic Keys [to My Creations and Times]” and then me and Samoth wrote some lyrics together. I wrote the lyrics to “Inno a Satana” and “The Majesty of the Nightsky” on my own. So it’s all a big mixture, but I think they were partly drawn out from some of the concepts that Mortiis was working on at the time. The rest was pure imagination. I think there was a lot of running through forests [laughs]—it’s all very epic. I suspect we used the word “landscape” more than once as well.

Samoth: I think we saw “Emperor” as a sort of entity. We didn’t really ever use the word “Satan” much in our lyrics. We’ve always used a lot of metaphors and symbolism. Emperor became a metaphor for our own entity, for the dark lord, for the devil, for the strong and the mighty. There could be several ways to see it, you know.

Tchort: I don’t think I read the lyrics until I was holding the finished album in my hands. I came from a different part of Norway, so the few times we met were for rehearsals — I didn’t witness the birth of the songs and the lyrics behind them.

There’s an essay in the appendix to the book Lords of Chaos that compared black metal as a Scandinavian youth phenomenon to the Norse legend of the Oskoreien, “the ride of the dead,” which was also reflected in a Norse folk custom that involved groups of young males terrorizing villages on horseback while wearing masks, making noise, etc. Are you referring to Oskoreien in “Into the Infinity of Thoughts” when the lyrics go, “In the name of the almighty Emperor I will ride the Lands in pride, carrying the Blacksword at hand, in warfare”?

Ihsahn: Until you say it now, I’ve never heard that comparison. To be honest, my only connection to Oskoreien is more or less the famous Norwegian painting—I’ve seen the original at the national museum here in Norway. It’s also on the cover of the Bathory album Blood Fire Death, which is my favorite black metal album. But I never read Lords of Chaos. I know I did an interview with that guy, and I think I’m referenced in the book, but I never bothered to read it. I’ve never had any interest in that side of it—all the hysteria, and what everybody else wanted it to be. Of course, in the beginning, we knew all the people involved, but the whole idea of a unified black metal scene was just very unfamiliar to how I experienced it. I’ve always been detached from that and, how do you say? . . . kind of self-centered about my own work. I’ve never cared very much for the whole scene and its development.

Was there anything in particular that influenced the lyrics—books, films, etc.?

Samoth: Emperor expressed many things, both internal and external, during the years. The power of Norwegian nature was always a source of inspiration for us, especially in the earlier years. We found great motivation in the vast forests and mighty mountains, and would actively be a part of it and also use its visual strength in our artistic vision. We also had a strong fascination for anything ancient, such as the Viking era. Ihsahn and I would spend a lot of time brainstorming on concept ideas, and at one point we had this whole concept of a dark fantasy world going. It was all very visual, I think. We drew a lot of influences from artwork related to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. And keep in mind, this was 10 years before you could buy a “Lord of the Rings burger” at Burger King—quite a different vibe, so to say. We also had a period where we had a strong fascination for the whole Dracula myth and everything related to Transylvania, the Carpathian Mountains, the dark corners of Eastern Europe and folklore. For example, a film like Nosferatu—both the 1979 one and the 1922 silent movie—was a big part of our ambiance and visual influences.

Ihsahn: The lyrics represent very much the imaginary world we were occupied with. I never really read The Lord of the Rings or any of the things that everybody in that scene was reading at the time. I steered away from that, but the words we used and the fantasy imagery were still part of the whole way we thought and played. It doesn’t really mean much in particular on this album, but it does capture the essence of the atmosphere of that time.

There weren’t that many black metal bands in existence at the time you recorded In the Nightside Eclipse. Were you enjoying the freedom of what was essentially a new art form, or did you feel restricted in any way by an ideology you felt you had to adhere to?

Samoth: I don’t think we felt too restricted. When we first started Emperor, we stripped everything down from what we were used to with our death metal outfit, Thou Shalt Suffer. Our aim was to go back to basics and sound like Celtic Frost, Tormentor from Hungary and Bathory . . . lots of Bathory! But as we got more serious with Emperor, we started to develop a more personal sound in addition to the obvious black metal influences. It was based a lot around the use of keyboards and the whole atmospheric and symphonic aspects. It became our thing, and we just took that further and further, really. But at the same time, it was very important for us to make sure we still maintained a certain spirit in the sound.

Faust: Black metal had existed for many years, but this was the second wave, and ours was the more symphonic black metal. We knew—or we started to realize—that it would be something different, but I don’t think we felt we were caught by any ideology because we pretty much did what we wanted.

Tchort: Black metal was still very new to me, and since I hadn’t been in the scene—I came from a death metal band—I didn’t know much about the ideology, so I certainly didn’t feel any restrictions. I understood the passion for atmosphere and even melodies that was put into the music, but besides that, I tried to play my part well and not be concerned about anything else.

Ihsahn: We were so young, and we had no idea what kind of impact this whole thing was going to have. I suppose now black metal has become a world-renowned phenomenon, but at the time, it was so small and so totally underground, we were just occupied with trying to do our best. I mean, I know Pytten used a lot of big reverbs, so it all sounded very majestic, which is maybe how he interpreted it. For In the Nightside Eclipse, we also kind of built further on the use of keyboards to try and give it more of an orchestral feel.

Not many other black metal bands were using keyboards very extensively back then.

Ihsahn: Yeah—I think that came from when me and Samoth played in several bands prior to Emperor. We used keyboards in [Thou Shalt Suffer], so that kind of developed into a more progressive death metal. At the time we did the first Emperor EP, we wanted to use some layers of keyboards, and that kind of evolved on In the Nightside Eclipse—but even on that record the keyboards are very simplified, compared to later releases. At the time, there were no bands using keyboards in the same fashion.

Faust: Emperor and Enslaved were the only bands with guys who could actually play the synth and the piano. Up ’til then, all the use of synth in black metal had been made out of very minor knowledge of the instrument—just mak- ing the easiest chords and stuff. But Ihsahn and Ivar from Enslaved were able to create good melodies on the synth and use it as an instrument along with the guitar and bass and drums. I remember people in other bands would see Ihsahn and say, “Shit, this guy really knows how to play the synth.” It wasn’t really that common back then, so I think we realized that we were a lot different from bands like Immortal and Burzum, who played a very primitive kind of black metal back then.

Tchort hadn’t been in the band very long at that point.

Faust: Tchort replaced Mortiis, who was kicked out or asked to leave in the beginning of 1993, after the recording of the mini-album.

Samoth: After Mortiis left, we played without a bass player for a while, and then actually Ildjarn [who had been in Thou Shalt Suffer] played bass for us, but that didn’t end up being anything permanent. I think we hooked up with Tchort during the winter of ’93 [early ‘93]. We left for our first tour in June, which was the U.K. tour with Cradle of Filth, and by that time he had already been with us for a little bit.

Tchort: I felt comfortable with the band and its other members, especially since we had just spent two weeks together touring in the U.K., but recording the album and being in a professional studio was a new experience for me. I had only recorded a demo before that. I didn’t have more than a handful of rehearsals before we went to the U.K. to play—and then we went straight to the studio.

Ihsahn: [Laughs] When we went to the U.K. to tour with Cradle of Filth, they were our support act!

The album was recorded in July of 1993, but wasn’t mixed until the following year. Why the delay?

Faust: Well, basically because half of the band ended up in prison. I was arrested one month after the recording, as was Samoth, who was released not long afterwards. My charges were a bit more serious, so I stayed in prison and didn’t take part in the mixing. I wrote down my point of view on a piece of paper for them to take into consideration during the mixing, but it was mostly about the drums and stuff.

Samoth: There was a lot of stress that fall with Bård and I being arrested and taken into custody. I was, however, let out again some few weeks later, but Bård didn’t come out until nearly 10 years later. Fucking crazy, eh? There was a lot of turbulence within the scene around this time, and this pushed the whole thing back quite a bit. I believe that Grieghallen was also booked for a while, so we had to wait. Eventually we found the focus and got studio time booked for the mix. It was just Ihsahn and I who went for the mix; I remember us sleeping in a rehearsal room in Oslo, and taking the early morning train to Bergen. I believe we gave Candlelight all production parts by late fall of ’94. They had it pressed in ’94, but it didn’t really reach most distributors and shops until early ’95, so that’s why many see it as a ’95 release. It was a very frustrating time, as we lost our drummer, the stable lineup, and the whole Norwegian scene was in turmoil and we weren’t really sure what lay ahead for us as band. But in retrospect, I actually think the whole delay of the album made it an even stronger release. We sent out advance tracks to a lot of friends, and the tracks spread around the world and created a great expectation for the release.

Tchort: I also remember Ihsahn was sick during the recording of his vocals and he was spitting blood during the sessions. He did some vocals that were replaced with new vocal recordings later on—when he got better—so I think that contributed to the delay as well. They had to go back to the other side of the country to redo the vocals and do some more keyboards. He probably couldn’t do any clean vocals when he was sick, either.

Bård, were you nervous about getting caught by the police while you were record- ing the album?

Faust: Not really, because a lot of time had passed [since the murder], so I didn’t really think that much about it. I think it was a bit of luck that we were able to finish the recording before both Samoth and I got caught.

Varg Vikernes killed Euronymous shortly after you finished recording In the Nightside Eclipse. He also lived in Bergen. Did you see him often during the recording sessions?

Tchort: He came by and we spent some time at his apartment, too. I think I took a shower there and used his bubble bath. [Laughs] The killing happened later on, but I can’t recall exactly when Euronymous was murdered.

Samoth: It was just weeks after we returned from the studio that all hell broke loose in Norway. It’s weird to think about, really. If all the controversy with the police had happened a little sooner, this album would have never been made and the future of Emperor would probably have taken a whole different turn. We went to see Varg several times during the recording sessions. Even though we knew there was some tension between him and Euronymous, we didn’t really involve ourselves in that and didn’t really think that it would come to such extremes only weeks later. I have a classic memory of Varg stopping by the studio in his chain mail and standing in the recording room enjoying a huge ice cream with a smirk on his face.

At what point did you decide to dedicate the album to Euronymous?

Samoth: Sometime during ’94, I’m sure, when we pieced together the artwork for the album. It was natural for us to do so, as Euronymous had always been very supportive of what we were doing and he was also a friend of ours, especially to Bård. He wanted to sign us to his label, Deathlike Silence Productions, but we had already done the mini-album with Candlelight and made the decision to stick with them.

Ihsahn: I think it felt very natural at the time, since he was so recently deceased, and we were releasing an album at that time. Bård was working very much with Euronymous at [Euronymous’ infamous record shop] Helvete, so it felt right at the time.

Faust: Yeah, I reckon that I was the one closest to Euronymous. I worked in his record shop and also at some point lived together with him. I think it was a consensus some time after the murder when things finally started coming down to ground again. No one thought about not dedicating the album to him. It was the most obvious thing in order to commemorate his memory.

Where did you pose for the photos on the back cover?

Faust: Apart from Tchort, I think they were all taken outside of Samoth’s place—in the woods—but at different times.

Tchort: My photo was taken at a local cemetery. I was later arrested because I stole that stone angel with the blood covering it and placed it in my bedroom.

Ihsahn: I remember there was no Photoshop or anything like that at that time. If you look at my photo, there’s this dark background, and that was a very manual cut and paste. I’m cut out with scissors and glued onto a different back- ground. I think it was the same with the goat in Samoth’s picture. We had to be very handy at that point—we didn’t have all the technology that people have today. We took our own photos, too—we didn’t have any contact with photographers or designers, you know? Things are almost too easy these days.

How did you decide on Necrolord’s cover art?

Samoth: I’d seen some of his work, like Grotesque’s Incantation mini-LP and Dissection’s The Somberlain, and liked his style. This was before he took off as an artist, I guess, and before long, every black metal album had a blue-toned art piece as a front cover. [Laughs] Originally, an ex-girlfriend of mine had tried to draw something for us, and from that we had a sketch of the tower that can be seen on the cover. Later, Ihsahn and I pieced together a bunch of ideas, [including] the tower and incorporating the death rider from the first mini-album, and we sent that to Necrolord. He did an awesome job and totally got our ideas and the vibe we were looking for at the time. I think to this day it stands out as a classic black metal album cover.

Faust: I thought it was fantastic—the perfect visual for the music—even though today it might seem a bit cheesy. It’s a little bit mysterious, and maybe a bit Lord of the Rings.

Which song holds up the best for you personally?

Ihsahn: I think both “Cosmic Keys” and “I Am the Black Wizards” hold up well still—especially “I Am the Black Wizards,” which was popular from the beginning. But usually my favorites from the albums we’ve made have hardly ever been the same as everybody else’s. I think my favorite from this album is probably “In the Majesty of the Nightsky” because it has some musical elements that I feel were very well thought out for the time.

Samoth: Actually, I think the whole album holds up still. Of course, songs like “I Am the Black Wizards” and “Inno a Satana” have both gone down as “classics,” but the whole album has a very real and natural flow, I think.

Faust: I think “Inno a Satana” is the perfect black metal hymn. That track manifests itself as the personification of symphonic black metal. I think it’s a really, really good track—it’s what constitutes symphonic black metal for me.

In the Nightside Eclipse is the record many people would consider the first fully realized symphonic black metal album.

Faust: Yeah, I think it’s the first album that consciously tried to make black metal symphonic. Ihsahn has always been very good at orchestrating music, and I think that everybody who has a relationship to symphonic black metal always points back to In the Nightside Eclipse as maybe the first album that inspired him or her to start making that kind of music. That’s a huge compliment.

How long after its release did you realize the influence/impact it had?

Ihsahn: I remember the first time we went on a European tour with Bal-Sagoth. They were actually older than us, but they said they started playing more black metal–style music—with keyboards—because of the first Emperor EP. We felt that was a bit strange, but later on we were in England and we met the guys from Cradle of Filth, who claimed that In the Nightside Eclipse was the album that everybody had. But the impact Emperor, as a band, has had on this black metal scene—and to some extent extreme metal—has been most noticeable after we quit the band. But I haven’t given much thought to how influential we were, or how influenced we were by others, or any of the more superficial aspects of it.

Tchort: I am still to this day overwhelmed by the impact the album seemed to have on the scene. I travel more than ever now, with my bands [Green Carnation, Carpathian Forest], and in the darkest and most uncommon places of the world, I meet with people who approach me and tell me how much that album means to them.

Samoth: It wasn’t really until after [1997’s] Anthems [to the Welkin at Dusk] was released that we started getting a lot of front covers and bigger media attention, and then Emperor really started to become larger and taken more seriously in general. Looking at Nightside, I think there was a lot of buzz and hype about the album even before it came out—with advance tracks spreading around the world, there was a lot of anticipation in the underground about the release. When it finally came out, it quickly became an album that led to a lot of influences in the growing black metal scene—or black metal boom, rather.

Faust: I corresponded with Samoth while I was in prison, and I had access to magazines and stuff, so I saw that black metal was growing bigger and bigger. The album sold very well, and I saw that people were inspired by it, but I’m not sure I realized how big Emperor were before I started to see the tours they did and things like that. I was a little bit hidden from all that attention when I was in prison, so I didn’t really see or understand it before I started to come out again on weekends to meet people and go to gigs again. I think it was in 1998 that I had the possibility of actually going out, but it wasn’t very often—maybe six times a year or something for 12 to 24 hours. I was given that opportunity because it’s a part of the Norwegian prison rehabilitation program. I remember going to a Dimmu Borgir gig in Oslo in 1998, and it was packed with a lot of people and young girls who I wouldn’t really imagine going to a black metal show. That’s when I saw how big it had become.

Do you feel differently about the album now than you did at the time you recorded it?

Ihsahn: At the time we recorded it, I was of course very proud of it. By the time we did a couple of more albums, it’s always like you wanna go back and change things you think you could’ve done better. [Laughs] By now I feel like that about all our albums. But I see it as a product of that time, where we were musically, and how old we were. It makes me feel like an old man at times, because it’s such a long time ago, and there are so many kids coming up these days that have the album, but were barely born when we recorded it. But I’ll be 30 in October, so I guess I’m not that old.

Tchort: For a period of time, I didn’t like it so much, mostly because of the production. But I’ve probably only heard it three or four times since it was recorded. The last time I heard it was earlier this year, after a show I had done with Carpathian Forest. There was an after-show party and I was lying on a couch when they played the whole album, and it struck me that I really got a kick out of the music. And I got that old vibe again . . .

Faust: Well, I do realize that if it was released today it would be a very cheesy album, but that’s something you can’t take into consideration, because it was recorded in 1993 and released one and a half years later. I don’t really listen to the album anymore—it’s been many years since I actually put it on, but I can appreciate the moods and atmospheres in the music and I can understand that a lot of people like it because it was a very good album at the time. But for me, today, there wouldn’t be any point in trying to re-create that album or to establish a band to continue in that vein.

Samoth: The album was something totally fresh for us when we were in the middle of making it, but today I see it almost in a historical sense—as a part of my life that also had great impact on how my life has become today, actually. We didn’t really know that we had made a groundbreaking album. We knew it was a good album that had something personal and unique to it in our genre, but we never really saw it becoming one of the classic black metal albums of all time. Even saying this now is weird, but it makes me really proud of what we managed to put together. We took our music and everything around it very seriously. Those times were very special. We were quite young and very active in a rather obscure underground movement. It almost seems like another life looking back at it now.

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