Emperor

If the name Christophe Szpajdel doesn’t ring a bell you probably don’t own CDs or LPs (or, you’re new to underground metal; hey, we all start somewhere). ‘Tis the conundrum of being the product of a digital age. Liner notes, credits, lyrics, etc. often get pushed to some dark corner of a binary folder (or…

A couple of weeks ago we told you that UK writer Dayal Patterson had finished off a 600-page history of black metal, Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, a book that aimed to peel the corpsepaint off black metal’s sensationalist public image and look at how it started and how it got to where it…

Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult is a 600-page book by UK author Dayal Patterson that delves deep into the history and development of black metal as an art form and a culture. It is released on November 13th, but is now available to pre-order from Amazon at a discounted price. Published via Feral House,…

Once Second Wave titans Emperor were done scorching the earth with black metal, Ihsahn wasn’t slow in scaling the genre’s perimeter fence, and high-tailing it in search of a fresh sound that rested far from the genre’s weirdly orthodox iconoclasm. Progressive metal was a neat fit, a suitably abstract direction to define his sound as…

England’s Candlelight Records has without doubt made an impact on the genre of extreme metal.  The home to Emperor’s amazing legacy and the early trilogy of recordings from Opeth, the label has introduced the world to some of metal’s most unique and successful artists. In 2001, the label launched an American division that has since…

So, two Norwegians — ex-Emperor/ex-Zyklon guitarist Samoth and Mindgrinder/ex-Scum guitarist Cosmo — and one Swede — ex-Dark Funeral/ex-Aeon drummer Nils Fjellström — team up to form The Wretched End. Now, typically Swedes despise the Norwegians for one reason or another (usually because the Norwegian Kronor has more purchasing power than the Swedish Kronor and the…

In the Norwegian summer of 1993, the second wave of black metal was still in its ultra-violent infancy, and only a handful of bands were actively exploring the parameters of what was then an obscure and distinctly Scandinavian art form.