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Emperor Concert Review
They say that lightning doesn’t strike twice. The reunited Emperor prove otherwise.
After nearly six years of being disbanded, these Norwegian luminaries came together again to perform a limited number of international shows in 2006, including two venues in the United States. These were in New York City and Los Angeles, leaving Chicago and the entire center of the continent rather disgruntled. However, not to be discouraged myself, I dropped the hundreds of dollars to make the trip out to NYC and catch Emperor’s first scheduled (but literally second, due to additional dates being added after the first sold out) performance on American soil since they broke up. And after that, I thought, it was over.
However, Emperor seem to have taken a bit of a hint from the perennially retiring and un-retiring sports stars in America nowadays and decided to come over once again, this time with a Chicago date on their schedule along with the original two. It was an opportunity I could not pass up, particularly since it was so much easier a trip this time around. That first experience in NYC, rather than satiating my appetite, only managed to whet it. Before openers were announced, before ticket prices were announced, even before the date was announced, I guaranteed my attendance at that show.
May 30th finally came around after many weeks of uncomfortable waiting, and along with some collected cohorts I trekked down to The Metro in Wrigleyville. My crew included, among others, a fellow writer who drove the 8 hours from Columbus, Ohio and a (relative) veteran of the metal scene and one of few Americans to have caught Emperor when they last played in Chicago eight years ago. (That show, by the way, also included Peccatum, Borknagar, and Divine Empire.)
When we arrived at the venue approximately 15 minutes before the 5:30 opening of the doors the line was literally already stretching around the block. Not all the way, but at least around one of the corners. Considering how meager the presale was rumoured to have been, this strong a turn-out was pleasant to see.
Another group were turning out that evening, too: Cubs fans. The Metro is less than two blocks from Wrigley Field, where a night game was going to be played, so parking was an absolute nightmare and beastly expensive to boot. However, considering the band we were preparing to see and keeping that burgeoning line in mind, we soon decided to pay the arm and leg prices and get on our way with all haste.
The mood in the line was upbeat and excited. While there wasn’t much conversation between individual groups, neither were people ignoring one another per the usual; something about a band like Emperor and the rarity of the experience brings strangers together, if only through smiles and nods and the ubiquitous horns. But of course, as The Metro’s sign reminded me, it was just Emperor we were going to see. Opening for them were the epic death/black hybrid Martriden and Lupara, the new project from Broken Hope guitarist Jeremy Wagner. I can’t say I was too thrilled for either, but I planned to watch both, regardless.
Inside the club, the crowd was already rather thick, but those of us who chose to take to the floor still found good spots and plenty of elbowroom. At right around 6:30 Martriden took the stage quickly and kicked things off. They looked a little nervous doing so, which is understandable; as a band they have only released one EP, they come from the rural state of Montana, and here they were opening for Ihsahn, Trym, Samoth, and company—‘The Emperors’. Their stage jitters came across in a few technical missteps like a miscue on the guitar harmonies or the drummer really having to force out his double kick from time to time, but the most obvious was their overall lack of stage presence. Although it is true they didn’t have much space, with the extra drum kit in front of Trym’s upon the riser, but they still looked more like fans who’d been taken from the audience and placed up on stage than actual performers. However, on the whole they were well received by the crowd and quite impressive for such a fresh band, particularly when playing to an almost entirely unfamiliar audience with only one EP under their belts.
Their set, which was essentially the EP played live (i.e. every song they’ve released), was a little under half an hour. Only four songs long, it wrapped up a little ahead of time to some enthusiastic crowd response. The band stood on stage for an unusual length of time after their lights went down just looking at one another, but soon enough the running crew and roadies came out to make the changeover for Lupara.
I had already seen Lupara when they opened for Unleashed, Belphegor, and Krisiun in February, but that show had been far more sparsely populated and certainly not possessing the same level of excitement. Despite the shift in scenery, though, this second performance was also less than memorable. Still, perhaps because of my lowered expectations, the few solos that lead guitarist Tom Brandner did unleash sounded remarkably good. They were wily and inventive, rather ‘balls to the wall’ in some ways and head-banging appropriate in others; it was just their bad luck to be bracketed by breakdowns and trumped-up-, testosterone-pumped jaw-jutting. Their 45 minutes felt rather long indeed, and more than once I retired to the upstairs to chat with some others in my group.
Some other fans were less circumspect in their displeasure, and more than a handful called out, ‘Emperor!’ in between Lupara’s songs. A few even flicked the band off. To their credit, though, Lupara handled the issue professionally and their vocalist Craig Gross said more than once that he appreciated us ‘sticking around whether we liked [them] or not.’
Not everyone was opposed to them, and a few heads in the audience bobbed to their beatdowns—typically the muscle-bound types with sideburns—and one long-limbed fan in particular in the front row was constantly raising his arms up towards them. However, as it turns out, he was extraordinarily high, and after a brief fracas with another member up front was kicked out, so it’s difficult to say whether he knew the band or even enjoyed them at all.
Their set felt drastically too long, but in reality I believe that they actually ran short, as by the time they had thanked us, cheered for Emperor, and left the stage it was easily 15 minutes before their scheduled end. However, I was not one to complain; for me it only meant that Emperor was that much closer and, perhaps, would have more time to play.
The rest of the audience was thinking the same, and had started chants of ‘Emperor!’ at least 20 minutes before the schedule had them taking the stage at 8:30. None of them lasted particularly long, but more people joined in for each than I would have predicted. In fact, I can safely say that this was one of the most enthusiastic Chicago crowds I have seen at a metal show, and certainly the most vocal I’ve been around in quite some time. They were not as manic as the fans were last year for Emperor, nor as inhumanly tireless as ProgPower’s in Atlanta, but they were consistently eager, loud, and energetic.
Around this time, the security guards took to the photo pit along with the rest of the photographers. There had been no crowd-surfing or moshing during the first two bands, and I don’t recall seeing security guards in the photo pit at The Metro before, but the decision to employ them for Emperor turned out to be a good one, as I lated discovered. I almost struck up conversation with one but was distracted by the arrival of a middle-aged bearded man to my right who towered over me by what looked like a good head and shoulders, which places him at or beyond 6’6”. He was quiet at first, but then spontaneously uttered a strange series of non sequitur comments that began with, ‘Samoth will be there, Ihsahn there, and Secthdaemon, there’, pointing from left to right as he did. I surmised that he worked with the band, which turned out to be correct, and we went on to discuss the article he will be writing about American Black Metal and some names that would be good to remember. He apparently is also an employee of Metal Hammer, but before I could get his name the lights went down and Emperor’s intro backing track washed over us with the white mist from the wings.
After a brief minute and constant cheering, Emperor themselves arrived. First came Secthdaemon, then Trym settled in behind his bastion of a kit, and finally Ihsahn and Samoth together, with Einar slipping behind the keyboard in the back. They acknowledge the crowd perfunctorily, took up their proverbial axes, and let loose with the classic opener, ‘Into the Infinity of Thoughts’.
As expected, the sound in the live setting was enormous, especially compared to their albums. ‘In The Nightside Eclipse’ is a landmark release, but never will it garner praise for having particularly strong production, and Ihsahn’s vocals are in their early stages of development. Too, when I saw them in NYC the year before, Samoth had been denied a visa, leaving Ihsahn as the only guitar player and, consequently, leaving their set sounding a little off. This time, however, all the pieces were in place. Samoth and Ihsahn play in perfect tandem, churning out the tremolo as if they could carry on forever, Secthdaemon providing the powerful bass foundation and a strong, deep growl, while Einar supplies the crucial keys and Trym lays down an impossibly precise drum assault. It was, in all sense of the word, fantastic.
However, Emperor are not a band who move around very much. Their typical lay-out is Ihsahn with a leg up on an amp, Secthdaemon with boots spread wide, Samoth occasionally headbanging, and Trym and Einar both anchored behind their respective instruments. Despite this, each member radiated such intensity that more movement wasn’t necessary. Ihsahn in particular was consumed by the music. With his faint headshakes, grimaces, and upraised eyes, it looked as if he was constantly critiquing his performance, seeking out every inch of effort to lay out on the fretboard and into the microphone for us.
I later heard from others who had been up on the balcony that the mix sounded more imbalanced to them and that Emperor’s stage presence was not quite what it could have been, but to them I can only say, ‘Go to the pit.’ That, so to speak, is where Emperor reign. It’s not that their mosh pits are significantly more ferocious than any others, nor is it that the band goad people on—in fact, Ihsahn does nothing of the sort. (Samoth did get some claps and chants started, but generally only with his section of the crowd in a personal way.) It is rather that, both times I’ve seen them, the experience at the front and center is completely impossible to recreate anywhere else in the venue, from both the sound and stage-show perspectives. From the photo pit to the upstairs to the first few rows, where I eventually ended up, it was only at that final spot that all the pieces of Emperor’s sound came together in the torrential manner that they do on record (in spirit on the early works and in effect on the later).
And as for the stage-presence, it’s all about the subtlety. Some bands run around, wave their guitars, go crazy and scream at the crowd. Emperor is not one of those bands. They are, after all, called Emperor—to dash about with such a moniker would be undignified—and their music takes on a much more malevolent, incisive feeling when they are standing, staring, and calmly unleashing hell. From the balcony it is impossible to see the curling lip of Ihsahn or his rolling eyes, the baleful glare of Samoth, or the muted pride on Secthdaemon’s face as his belts out his growls with boots planted wide. Emperor have cultivated a very poised image over the years in potent opposition to their music of organized chaos, and sitting in the balcony does not really help one see the balance at work. One might say that the band owe it to the entire crowd to be engaging, but I think their success at such massive festivals as Inferno and Wacken can attest to their abilities in that department.
Enough editorializing—back to the set. After the opener, Emperor stuck closely to the setlist I remember from a year ago, with ‘Thus Spake the Nightspirit’, ‘An Elegy for Icarus’, and ‘Curse You All Men!’ following in quick succession. The contrast between the clean vocals in ‘An Elegy…’ and the warped effect on to begin ‘Curse You…’, was phenomenal. Between songs, Ihsahn would occasionally pause to introduce the next one or point out the transition between albums. ‘In The Nightside Eclipse’ was the favored source of material, followed closely by ‘Anthems…’, then ‘IX Equilibrium’, and finally ‘Prometheus…’. I would have liked to have heard ‘Eruption’ or ‘Thorns on My Grave’ from the latter, but they played only one song from it, ‘In the Wordless Chamber’, with piercing synths replacing the horn sample during the ‘chorus’.
I tried to write down the setlist as they played through it, but by the time I had forced my way through the moshpit and into the fourth row, there wasn’t room to reach into my pocket, much less write cleanly, and my memory doesn’t serve me perfectly. To the best of my memory, they played ‘Towards the Pantheon’ followed by ‘The Majesty of the Nightsky’, but I also seem to recall the climactic shrieks from ‘Cosmic Keys…’ as well. The only thing that I can explicitly recall from those dehydrated and bludgeoned 15 minutes was that somewhere along the way I looked down to my left and saw Screech from Saved By The Bell. Or his cousin. Whoever it was, the resemblance was eerie enough to make me forget precisely which songs followed which at the time. Apparently, Screech is an Opeth fan, too, and attended their 2005 tour.
A brief halt in the music brought me back to the band and Ihsahn’s one monologue. He spoke about how appreciative the band all were and what an experience it was for them to return to such enthusiastic audiences across the globe. For all the criticism of being ‘aloof’ and ‘pretentious’ that he sometimes gets, he sounded truly humble. From the pit, the response was deafening, with everyone not jockeying for position clapping, cheering, and raising the horns.
And with that, Emperor got right back to it with ‘The Loss and Curse of Reverence’, the aforementioned cut from ‘Prometheus’, and their first closer, ‘Inno A Satana’, which Ihsahn introduced as, “a song that has been with us for a very long time….” With the clean vocal finish and the massive crowd participation, I can’t quite think of another Satanic devotional that sounds so content and stirring. Once it was through, Ihsahn thanked us all, tossed his single pick into the crowd, and departed with the rest.
The lights stayed low, though, and we knew that they were not done, and began again the cheering and chanting of ‘Emperor!’ It was around 9:20 now, with 40 minutes left on their schedule but already an hour behind them, so I had my doubts as to how much of an encore they were going to play. Bruised and tired as I may have been, I still could have stayed all night, and the hundreds pushing at my back were no more inclined to leave.
And Emperor were not going to disappoint us. After a minute or two they again returned, waving to us and raising the horns, but still very businesslike for all that, much as they had been to begin the set. With a bit of a smile, Ihsahn asked us if we were ready for a couple more, we howled, and so began ‘I Am The Black Wizards’. And although this time around Ihsahn didn’t have his classic black metal spiked epaulets, the absolute fury of their final closer, ‘Ye Entrancemperium’, was enough to finish the evening in high fashion (i.e. frostbitten grimness).
Finally done, the band thanked and nodded to us once again. Samoth clasped hands with a few audience members from his side, where he had dominated all night, Trym stood from his kit and raised his arms (contrary to my suspicions, he does have only two and they are not hypercharged metronomes), and with the chants of ‘Emperor!’ already starting again, they took their leave.
I had hoped for a second encore, this time with the epaulets just for kicks, but there was none coming. Emperor had given us as good a show as we were going to get, anyway, and had played most of the best material. I still can’t quite decide which performance of theirs that I’ve seen was the better—this one for its completeness, the first for its precedent—but when I asked the friend who had seen them those eight years ago, ‘So, which show was better?’, he snorted and responded immediately, ‘This one.’ Here’s to hoping that lightning strikes become something of a habit.
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