EMPEROR

Black metal’s true visionaries overcome an excess of visuals

JONATHAN SELZER

NOTODDEN TEATER, NOTODDEN ANY EMPEROR SHOW is guaranteed to bring a host of memories flooding back into an all-immersive present, but tonight’s livestream – dubbed, with a nod to past live and compilation albums, A Night Of Emperial Wrath – comes with a few added, welcome echoes. For a start, there’s an actual audience, albeit out of sight and clearly socially distanced from the well-mannered applause that greets each song, rather than a more fitting ecstatic critical mass. Having said that, Emperor have become one of heavy metal’s genuinely class acts, with a vision that still sounds so startling it never feels like a mere exercise in nostalgia. Perhaps an outdoor setting, or more elaborate stage production would have accentuated Emperor’s grand, firmament-warping sweep, but from the moment Ihsahn leads the charge…

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Metal Hammer UK (Digital) - 1 Issue, August 2021

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