{"id":482513,"date":"2019-02-21T09:26:52","date_gmt":"2019-02-21T16:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=797161"},"modified":"2019-02-21T09:26:52","modified_gmt":"2019-02-21T16:26:52","slug":"flashback-emperor-revisit-i-am-the-black-wizards-in-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/flashback-emperor-revisit-i-am-the-black-wizards-in-2006\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashback: Emperor Revisit \u2018I Am the Black Wizards\u2019 in 2006"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cI think you know this,\u201d Emperor frontman Ihsahn told a German audience in 2006 with a look of stoic pride on his face. After a burst of feedback, he launched into the rigid, darkly symphonic riffs of \u201cI Am the Black Wizards,\u201d one of the standouts on the Norwegian black-metal band\u2019s 1994 full-length, In the Nightside Eclipse<\/em>, a record that turns 25 today. The concert, at the Wacken Open Air festival, was one of the group\u2019s biggest-ever sets, and it came on the heels of their 2005 reunion, four years after they\u2019d split up over musical differences. Although they were no longer wearing black metal\u2019s signature corpsepaint, Ihsahn donned spiky shoulder pads for the occasion.<\/p>\n

Ihsahn had written his part of the song when he was 16, complementing guitarist Samoth\u2019s riffs, and they recorded it when the frontman was 17. The band\u2019s bassist at the time, Mortiis (who went on to become a prosthetics-wearing darkwave artist), penned the track\u2019s lyrics in the summer of 1992, including genre-defining lines like, \u201cHow many wizards that serve me with evil, I know not\/My empire has no limits.\u201d The song first appeared on the group\u2019s four-song Emperor<\/em> EP, but they went on to refine it and re-record it with new bassist Tchort for In the Nightside Eclipse<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we did In the Nightside Eclipse<\/em>, the material was well rehearsed and tight as hell, but at the same time we had a very relaxed feeling to it all,\u201d drummer Faust said in the book Louder Than Hell<\/em>. \u201cWe had no idea of the importance of what we were about to record. \u2026 Ihsahn was 17 years old at the time and couldn\u2019t get into the bars so he just stayed in the studio working. I used to say that all the great vocal work on the album was thanks to his being underage because Ihsahn had so much time to work on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The song, and In the Nightside Eclipse<\/em> as a whole, represented a new benchmark for black metal. Although there were records by Norwegian black metal artists Darkthrone and Burzum circulating, Mayhem hadn\u2019t yet released their first full-length, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas<\/em><\/a>, and the controversy surrounding the scene \u2014 including the murder of Mayhem\u2019s guitarist Euronymous at the hands of Burzum\u2019s outspokenly fascistic frontman Varg Vikernes, and several church burnings \u2014 sparked interest in the seemingly dangerous nascent genre. Emperor\u2019s Nightside<\/em>, which they dedicated to Euronymous, featured a level of sophistication the other bands hadn\u2019t yet reached and it became one of the scene\u2019s touchstones.<\/p>\n

Emperor too faced their share of strife when Samoth was arrested for church arson, Tchort was arrested for assault and drummer Faust admitted to murdering a gay man in 1992, prompting him to leave the band in 1994; he rejoined for a brief time in the mid-Nineties. But other than espousing the philosophies of Satanism, Ihsahn stayed outside the fray of the Norwegian black-metal scene and, with Samoth\u2019s return and the addition of new drummer Trym (featured in the video above), they pressed forward with 1997\u2019s Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk<\/em> (one of Rolling Stone\u2019s<\/a><\/em> Greatest Metal Albums<\/a>) up through 2001\u2019s Prometheus: The Discipline of Fire & Demise<\/em>. Through it all, \u201cI Am the Black Wizards\u201d remained a consistent crowd favorite.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Poland, we played \u2018I Am The Black Wizards\u2019, it\u2019s one of the songs that we always play and you see grown men cry because they get very emotional,\u201d Ihsahn said last year, via Blabbermouth<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s in a similar way that some of my favorite music I grew up listening to or going to an Iron Maiden show and hearing some of my favorites from back in the day, it has a huge emotional impact on me.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI think you know this,\u201d Emperor frontman Ihsahn told a German audience in 2006 with a look of stoic pride on his face. After a burst of feedback, he launched into the rigid, darkly symphonic riffs of \u201cI Am the Black Wizards,\u201d one of the standouts on the Norwegian black-metal band\u2019s 1994 full-length, In the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-482513","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 10:01:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KQZR - The Reel","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482513\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}