IHSAHN

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 For someone perched at the vanguard of the
Norwegian-led Second Wave of black metal
Ihsahn has fared quite nicely. He never killed
anyone. He never razed a church to the ground.
Crucially, he didn’t get murdered or turn a gun
on himself, a burnished silver lining in any
walk of life even if it comes at the expense of
martyrdom status. Plus, he never succumbed
to the vacant hate speech/hate crime way of
life that identified some of his then peers as
utter shits. His moments of absolute Satanism
were occasional lapses into the sensational, and
ludicrous chrome spiked shoulder armoury the
only concession to looking sartorially krieg.
For some within the black metal scene,
that’s not really good enough, though, because
to truly capture the anti-everything extremist
zeitgeist your sins had to be mortal, lit by
the flaming ruins of Aske or broadcast by
Norwegian tabloid court reports. Never mind
Emperor’s ‘In The Nightside Eclipse’ and
‘Anthems To The Welkin At Dusk’ providing a
template for caterwauling Arctic fury, juiced
by Satanic innuendo and black magic, or the
picketing of Emperor’s gigs and the stores that
refused to stock them as a measure of their
iconoclast footprint. That Ihsahn has now
traipsed the firmament with two wantonly
progressive solo albums, ‘The Adversary’ and
‘angL’, not to mention the reflective Peccatum,
a project he embarked on with his wife Ihriel
(Heidi S Tveitan), is now cited as proof that
Ihsahn was somehow aloof from the ideological
purity burning at the core of black metal itself.
Something that he totally refutes, and hearing
him do so is really exciting because it seems
that no matter the sound that he as a solo artist
adopts, the ethic and creed still bind all of his
musical ideas together just as it did in 1992.
“I think that is why there is definitely more
ideology in my music than there was back in
the day. I spent so many years thinking about
these things that I am still very occupied by
the same kind of conflict and dilemmas,” he
confesses. Well, it’s more than a confession,
falling just short of a boast-cum-mission-
statement. Ihsahn, real name Vegard Sverre
Tveitan in case you want to write to him,
does neither. Much like his teenage self when
proclaiming the doctrine of Satanism on
MTV for a public jonesing for a fat hit of
sensationalism, he’s measured, thoughtful and,
in his own way, super intense.
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“Hopefully, I’ve grown a bit wiser since I
was sixteen. We should all hope that we at
least go in that direction. I think as a teenager
you start out, shouting out these opinions, clear
facts that you stand by, and in the Norwegian
black metal scene there were a lot of bold
statements, and then spend the rest of your life
thinking about the reasons why you said that.
Why you took that stand. To this day I stand
by it even more because, having experienced
that extreme hate from our surroundings,
standing so far out on the edge of society gives
you a very interesting perspective.”
Though this perspective of the cavalier rebel
has shadowed his every move, the vilification
which tarred his work with Emperor in the
early days has evaporated amongst the beige
cloying of borderline mainstream acceptance.
Not so much critically reappraised in its own
right, once black metal’s dark energy started
bringing home the cream, shifting units, raising
the share price of commodities such as leather
and steel, then the veneer of respectability
grudgingly lacquered onto previously
demonised works began to change the
perspective of those who had only ever viewed
the genre through the goggles of vicarious
hostility.
As Ihsahn recalls: “In Norway, there was an
immense hate to what we were doing and us as
people. The record stores, locally, would refuse
to sell Emperor albums. They wanted nothing
to do with murders and church burnings and
all that, which is understandable. But in the
newspapers and all that, once Emperor had
sold over half-a-million records, all of that
changed; now the same people will compliment
our success and forget all about the murders
and the church burnings. I try to tell them that
these albums never changed, it is the same
words, the same music, the same production…
The albums didn’t change, just because it
was a success it didn’t change what it said.
That’s why I called my first solo album ‘The
Adversary’ because that is very much what it
is supposed to be. To some extent I have been
seen as a bit of an adversary within the scene,
because everybody wanted us to continue
with Emperor and they provoked me; so many
people had a fucking opinion about what
Emperor is supposed to be and to me that it’s
wrong, I felt it was taken away from me.”
When Ihsahn first stuck his trident into
the porcine rump of civilisation and punched
God in the cock he was in good/bad company.
Tomas Thormodsaeter Haugen, aka Samoth,
now of Zyklon and once of Emperor, obviously,
was a suitable henchman. Not to mention
chaps like the fella with the nose, Mortiis, Bård
Faust… guys like that. Now, well Ihsahn’s kinda
the Howard Hughes of black metal. He’s such
a fucking solo artist that his bandmates email
him their takes and he entertains himself by
talking fluent geek on recording forums. Surely
he’d miss bro-times with the band.
“No, I really don’t!” he laughs. “Even though
Lars [Koppang Norberg, bass] has played on
the last two albums I’ve only met him once. I
only met him when I played my first live show
in Oslo. After that I met him some more times
but the whole collaboration has been over the
internet.”
Not only is that the antithesis of the old ‘60s
vibe of bands bonding in the jam room, but it’s
pretty fucking modern for someone who made
their name in the early ‘90s. With a boner for
gadgets, maybe Ihsahn is more of the Stephen
Fry of black metal.
“It’s an age where we have a lot of
opportunity,” he reasons, and he always sounds
most comfortable talking about technology,
musical theory, real hard facts rather than the
quasi-myth and legend of his past. “We talked
the other day, my wife wanted one of those
Kindles where you can read books, an iPod for
books, and it doesn’t even look like a screen,
it looks like paper. Who would have think that
MP3s could take away from CDs? Radiohead
offered ‘In Rainbows’ for free download but
still 83 per cent of the people who downloaded
it, downloaded it from Pirate Bay. We have
video Skype, and I feel old because I remember
when we got an internet line with a modem
and a dial-up line, you had to pay every time
you checked your email. And video phones
were almost a ‘Star Trek’ thing!”
One of new opus ‘After’s most endearing
qualities is an atmosphere painted with
shades of King Crimson, bejewelling what is a
sprawling elegiac portrayal of some apocalyptic
wasteland. Ihsahn’s knack for writing the
transcendent has not diminished since his
metier was more the life and times of the
black wizards than the pseudo sci-fi prog of
‘Frozen Lakes On Mars’. Imbued with a sense of
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 IHSAHN

bleakness and beauty, it is only natural to view

it as the final installment of a trilogy, bringing
some sense of resolution to the ‘The Adversary’
in 2006 and ‘angL’. If those were two albums
that helped Ihsahn emerge as a solo artist,
‘After’ defines him, with what is an altogether
more confident and complete work.
“The first solo record was very much an
experiment. I wanted to do everything I always
wanted to do but couldn’t within the limitations
of Emperor: that’s why the first album has
some references to some progressive stuff, some
‘70s stuff, Priest, Maiden and some death metal.
It was all over the place. I tightened it up in
sound and expression on ‘angL’, developing
more into my own style and mixed it myself,
and this time, though very much a solo effort,
I decided to mix it somewhere else [Fascination
Street Studios]. I guess over these three albums
the more confident I’ve become the easier it has
become to let other people in as well.”
Of course, guests on Ihsahn’s solo work
are nothing new. Enigmatic Ulver mainman
Kristoffer ‘Garm’ Rygg and Opeth visionary
Mikael Åkerfeldt featured on ‘The Adversary’
and ‘angL’ respectively. But Shining (No)
saxophonist Jørgen Munkeby’s contribution to
‘After’ is something else entirely, adding a sense
of danger, of loneliness and vulnerability which
dovetails nicely with those ethereal melodies
and Ihsahn’s newly found eight-string crunch.
And the holy shit cool thing is that a lot of
Munkeby’s parts were improvised on the spot.

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 “The very nice thing about Jørgen is that
he really is very much from a jazz background
so he catches onto the emotion straight away.
I can’t remember what song it was exactly, but
it was one of those improvised parts where I
think he just had a go at it and I thought it was
great, a fantastic performance, but didn’t really
fit my feeling for the song. During the writing
process I had a lot of images on my computer
that inspire me, like landscapes and surface
shots from Mars. And I just explained all these
conceptual things for that song and described
some of these landscapes and he completely
changed his approach and did something that
was even more fantastic, so much more in
context with what I’d imagined. He cottoned on
to the vibe.”
s Munkeby was recommended after a chance
encounter with Norwegian jazz pianist/
producer/composer Bugge Wesseltoft in Paris.
It was only after hiring Munkeby that Ihsahn
realised his saxophonist was au fait with metal,
but he was always aware that he was covering
new ground with the one instrument that could
give ‘After’ that all important fresh dynamic.
“When it was time to do the album I
realised I’d never been in the same room
where a saxophone was playing, it was always
through a record. I have this impression of the
saxophone being this very solitary instrument,
it expresses this kind of loneliness and has this
very epic feel. This album is less subjective,
less personal, I didn’t want a guest voice on the
album but I did want to have a guest in and
the idea to bring the saxophone in, I thought,
would suit the material very well.”
Fear not, it’s not like ‘After’ is a Emperor
Version 2.0 with Maceo Parker grafted onto
the top of the mix. When HMV do their CD
stickering for the dumb, it could still say, ‘for
fans of Opeth and Enslaved’, both of whom
IHSAHN PG 22-25 V2.indd 4
Ihsahn views as kindred spirits. Yet maybe,
too, they should cite long standing David
Lynch collaborator Angelo Badalamenti as
a reference point. With that sort of twilight
noire vibe present throughout, even when
Ihsahn ups the aggression, ‘After’ is singularly
awesome. Assuaged through passages of
hooky, somnambulant choruses, Ihsahn,
once the architect of a genre’s sound, has
redrawn the genre’s perimeters. Despite scene
conservatism, black metal has been one of
the most adaptable genres, but is ‘After’ black
metal? And does anybody care other than
when it comes to filing it on iTunes?
“I never was too concerned with the scene,
and I’ve given that a lot of thought, especially
to the true and untrue black metal thing, I
think it is such a great paradox. I thought the
ground rules of black metal lay in the whole
‘do what thou wilst’ and then I got criticised
for taking Emperor in a more progressive
direction. But of many people in the scene,
I’ve stayed black metal. I did whatever the hell
I wanted and I thought that was the whole
point. It is a huge paradox when you start
putting rules on what black metal is supposed
to be or not to be. I think it’s great when I saw
Fenriz on Norwegian television the other day
singing ‘70s disco. It’s just funny that he would
do that because he is such an iconic figure in
black metal; he was always like that, he never
cared what people might think. He would be
the first to crack jokes when everybody else
wanted to be dead serious.”
It’s one of the contrary aspects of Ihsahn’s
character that he should still champion
the original black metal ethos, its sense of
hatred as much as its freedom, while still
surrendering some of its animalistic rawness
in favour of cerebral grandeur. But he’s
always been different, again, going back to
the original thrust of some black metal fans’
ludicrous arguments that Ihsahn was maybe
not evil enough. He is quite unequivocal
that he wouldn’t press Facebook’s ‘like’
button underneath the notions of murder and
ecclesiastical arson, but being young and a
lightweight with the booze kinda saved him
from getting caught up in the early ‘90s
mayhem.
“When we went to Oslo and stayed at
Euronymous’ shop [Helvete] – ask the other
guys, I’ve never been a good drinker – by
the time that everybody got drunk, went out
and did stuff I was already back at the shop,
asleep,” he laughs. “I was always a party poop
like that. When recording ‘In The Nightside
Eclipse’ in Grieghallen, Bergen, at night
everybody went to the [legendary Bergen
metal haunt] Garage. I was only seventeen,
I didn’t get in. I didn’t have ID. I ended up
with [infamour producer] Pytten in the studio
doing keyboards. I did the guitars and drums
first and I would be there to do the keyboards,
the guitars and the vocals and leads, all that,
while the other guys went out and got drunk
in Garage. I ended up getting up at nine in the
morning, going to the studio and staying there
from ten in the morning to ten in the evening
with Pytten. I think that kind of spurred all my
obsession with working in the studio.”
If you are one of those who would think
more highly of Ihsahn if he’d taken part in
what was nigh on regarded as terrorist activity
in Norway, you missed the point. Ihsahn is
taking the scenic route down the left hand
path, but the darkness in his work is ever
attendant. The Emperor is dead, and there is no
chance of a Second Coming. As Ihsahn says,
this is the after.
‘ After’ is out now on Candlelight
www.ihsahn.com
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