20th Anniversary Edition of one of the most influential albums in metal.
Emperors debut full length album, which set a new standard in extreme metal and has been the benchmark ever since, was released to universal acclaim in 1994. This is the album that introduced classical elements to the black metal sound and first made a wider audience take the genre seriously.
Two decades later, it is still the album seen by many as the pinnacle of its kind, and has influenced an uncounted number of bands. This anniversary edition is presented in deluxe hardback Digibook packaging with restored cover artwork and featuring rare archive pictures and content.
Review:
When the world first discovered Norwegian black metal, it was largely
thanks to a well-publicized crime spree that left several scenesters dead or in
jail. Most of the music available at that point – by bands like Mayhem,
Darkthrone, and Burzum – was intentionally ugly, poorly produced, and proud
of it. It might have been easy for outside observers to dismiss the music itself
as inconsequential noise; that is, if Emperor's debut album In the Nightside
Eclipse hadn't arrived at exactly the right moment. Released just a few months
before the well-publicized murder trial of Varg Vikernes, the album would itself
soon find three of its four performers imprisoned. But for anyone drawn in by
the surrounding sensationalism, In the Nightside Eclipse resoundingly
demonstrated that there was real musical substance and ambition in the world of
black metal. Its epic vision didn't mesh with the general “anti-music” mind
set of the rest of the scene, yet somehow managed to capture the essence of the
genre while completely rewriting its rule book. All the basic black metal
trademarks – furious blastbeats, tremolo-picked chords, raspy reptilian
vocals – are here, but combined with atmospheric keyboards, symphonic
grandeur, and poetic (if indecipherable) lyrics about nature and ancient
Scandinavian paganism. (Well, OK, and Satan too.) This is music that's extreme
yet expressive, meant to evoke not just darkness and death, but the chill of a
Norwegian winter, the dread underpinning traditional folktales, and the harsh
and unforgiving landscape depicted on the front cover. Even if the keyboards
mostly just outline basic chord changes, they add a melancholy air to all the
furious extreme sounds, turning the one-note ugliness of black metal into
something emotionally complex. Original bassist Mortiis had already moved on to
a solo project, but his pagan poetry and interest in dark ambient music have
left their mark; his earliest co-writes here, “I Am the Black Wizards” and
“Cosmic Keys to My Creations and Times,” are among the most striking tracks
on the album, even if his input was only lyrical. It's true that the raw, lo-fi
production – in keeping with the standard black metal aesthetic of the
time – obscures some of the music's detail, rendering it an impenetrably
thick wall of noise. For many fans, this actually enhances the much-vaunted
ambience of the album, since it's hard to pick out individual elements,
everything washes together into a monolithic whole. It does take a few listens
for even the most memorable riffs and melodies to emerge from the maelstrom, and
of course, that outward inaccessibility is exactly what black metal purists
demand. Nevertheless, it was pretty clear that Emperor's ambition wouldn't
stand for not letting their listeners hear everything they were doing, setting
the stage for a major production leap on their next album. In the meantime,
though, In the Nightside Eclipse took its place as perhaps the definitive black
metal album. It pointed the way toward greater use of atmosphere and melody; it
was the first to fuse black metal with progressive and symphonic elements,
setting the stage for a bevy of future experimentation in the genre, and it
created a template for using folk traditions and melodies from one's homeland
as inspirations for material. As such, it certainly possesses the
farthest-reaching legacy of anything from Norway's bloody first wave, and ranks
as one of the most important heavy metal albums of the ‘90s.
All Music Guide – Steve Huey