Emperor Studio Albums Poll

God I haven't listened to these in so long. almost certainly "anthems" but I'll hold my vote and get back into them

I view Anthems through In the Nightside as like two of the most supremely awesome albums ever so my favorite is often the one I heard last.

seeing them live was a dream.

Nightside obv

Nightside obv

Anthems is the first BM album i ever remember hearing, and it remains my favourite of the genre. All my life i've had people say Nightside is the best, but it never stuck with me. Anthems has more dynamic range, more diversity and subtlety, more memorable parts (although that might boil down to familiarity tbh)

I love the titles of some of these songs. "The Acclamation of Bonds" is so preposterous. What do I look like, a bank?

That said, does Anthems peter out a bit in the second half? I tend to get so ensorcelled by the opening few tracks that the rest of it glides past me

Anthems and Nightside are dead even in my books. Edge to Nightside, just because of how YOUNG they were at the time. Astonishing.

I'm one of those who finds the mix on Anthems a bit hard on the ears. But the songs are incredible and I've heard amazing live versions.

Nightside is perfection.

A formative musical experience for me was going to a friend's house and trying weed for one of the first times up in his room. He put Anthems on and that opening section before it kicks in... I was young and had no frame of reference for this music. I think I genuinely believed it was recorded by demons on a Viking ship. Like, it genuinely didn't occur to me thst humans only a few years older than me could be making this music. It sounded ancient, mystical, impenetrable, numinous in a way that I just assumed it came from another dimension

that is a beautiful story. hearing this kinda music while high back then could be such a brain-fragmenting experience

in the nightside eclipse for me

man it's true that anthems is a LOT...but like...it's so special

It wasn't played live obviously but hearing Alsvartr come over the PA as Emperor took the stage and screaming I AM...THE EMPEROR! with hundreds of other fans was one of the greatest nights of my life

I think the reason Emperor are my favourite of all those 90s BM acts is something to do with the keyboards. Keyboards in metal can be so cheesy sometimes, addding nothing but one-dimensional pomp. But there's something about the way they sit so well in the eye of the storm, it's so evocative. A lot of metal just makes me think of "guys in a room", but never Emperor. I'm in a maelstrom, I'm riding a horse up a mountain, I'm in a dank sylvan forest, I'm descending into a void. This music transports me, which is what this kind of music should do: It's romantic. Further to my previous post about honestly believing this music was made by demons from another world, I remember being pretty disappointed when I much later happened to catch a music video (a music video! like they were NSync or something) and realising that they were just a bunch of geezers.

The Emperial Live Ceremony concert absolutely rules. The best versions I've heard of many of these songs.

https://candlelightrecordsuk.bandcamp.com/album/emperial-live-ceremony

that's actually the recording that got me itching to see them live, which is why I dropped the money to go on the cruise to see them back in 2020.

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voted nightside eclipse, though i do think the final two are underrated albums. i think ix equilibrium was the first BM album i ever bought after reading a very positive review in kerrang

they really are all great. I remember people saying they didn't like IX Equilibrium back in the day, but I can't see why. Maybe because of An Elegy Of Icaros? But I really like that one

I have admiration for Anthems and its complexity, but Nightside was first and introduced the formula and the magic. Anthems is frequently too dense even if arguably everything going on is sublime when you pay attention, there is no denying all the passages of smooth nocturnal ride where background seems frozen and suspended in time. Also, I believe The Acclamation of Bonds was the first black metal song I ever heard and it fascinated me.

Nightside was my first exposure to black metal. I had friends who were very into black metal, and I was trying hard to like their stuff. They said that Emperor was the best of the best. But I could barely hear it as music at first. It took years for the pieces to really fall into place, after a lot of other musical journeying. As I remember it, “Towards the Pantheon” was the song I kept going back to, and which gave me a way in. I could hear some of the music in it.

very similar experience to me. that initial moment in my friend's room listening to anthems aside, it took me a while to really understand the appeal. i still wouldn't call myself a "natural" metal listener, rather it's something that comes over me every few months where i'll have a several-day stretch of only wanting to live in this world. that said, i think a grounding in black metal has helped me to appreciate other things i wholeheartedly love, from Scott Walker's post-Tilt work to modern jazz, and even video games like Dark Souls

I suspect that what stuck for me in "Pantheon" was the riff at 1:05. I could connect it with the guitar sounds I loved in Sonic Youth. Same on the opening of "With Strength I Burn."

WSIB is such a great one.

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I voted Welkin. it's just a little weirder than Nightside.

Know what, I revisited it the past two days, and today I might have given it to Anthems. The songwriting and dynamics are insane, the riffs are positively buzzing, and it has this symphonic grandeur all over. I have a hard time picking a favorite track between Ye Entrancemperium, Ensorcelled by Khaos, The Loss and Curse of Reverence, and The Acclamation of Bonds. I also like With Strength I Burn, it's a tad long though, the first two minutes and the central riff are perfection but then it goes all Viking.

The compilation "Scattered Ashes: A Decade Of Imperial Wrath" is a rare instance of a "Best Of" that is exactly that. First CD is all-killer and collects the essentials from the four studio albums in a remarkably consistent way. The second CD is also very good - some great remixes, rarities and live versions. For a while it was my only Emperor CD so I'm most familiar with those tracks.

For me Anthems is just a weaker retread of Nightside, trying to recapture the magic with the same producer and no new ideas. It's not outright bad (like some of the later stuff), but if Samoth & Isahn hadn't reformed Emperor with a bunch of new guys after the 1993-4 events and had never made that album, their legacy would be exactly the same.

FWIW my favourite two Emperor albums are In The Nightside Eclipse and Setherial Nord

No offense but "weaker", "retread", "no new ideas", and implying it does not add anything to their legacy all feel extremely harsh, you make it sound like it's a completely non-essential release or as if nothing on it wasn't already done better on Nightside. I agree they kept the same envelope, but Anthems definitely has its own sonic identity and the songs stand out both from each other and from Nightside. No problem disagreeing and that we didn't seem to hear it the same, I'm just a little surprised. What would your expectations have been at the time?

Yeah i have to say I disagree. Within the (fairly consistent tbh) sound of Emperor, Anthems has more symphonic and melodic elements while Nightside is more of a straight-up BM album. Even the vocals sound different

There are things that I prefer about Nightside but Anthems has bigger drama, it's hysterically alive, I can't think of many other things with this particular energy.

At the time Anthems was the big comeback album for Emperor, Samoth was fresh out of jail, half the band replaced (bringing in Trym who just came off some amazing Enslaved records), big budget, global distribution, Pytten behind the mixing desk, everyone was stoked and they certainly went all-in for that grand sound of
Nightside-but-bigger, it was their big American breakthrough.

But I found (and still find) the end result all a bit hollow, lacking the magic, maybe hysterical is indeed the right word for it, where Nightside was *mystical*. And I’m still not fond of the mix. Nor of the drumming for that matter, it’s blasts, and blasts, and more blasts.

Those clean vocals and macho lyrics got a bit silly to, I know that those for the Nightside material were mostly written by Mortiis who was long out of the band, but still it didn’t help bring me back into that zone.

It’s absolutely not a bad album, the riffs are great, the atmosphere is largely there but with so many amazing Scandinavian black/death records in that roughly 95-97 post-media-frenzy period that still did have that certain magic, this was not one of them. It’s their New Jersey I guess. Or their Be Here Now, for the Brits.

I never really liked the more technical/prog BM-with-Manowar-lyrics stuff they did after that either, but at least they did try to do something different. I know that got them a whole new set of fans coming from the technical/prog metal side of things who were not into the whole hazy atmospheric mystical-spirits-burning-churches mythos, so I even though I’m not a fan, I think those albums did add more to their legacy than Anthems did.

Just one man’s opinion.

I thibk with these thibgs it often boils down to the one you heard first

I was initially disappointed by the general sound of Anthems, I wanted Nightside 2 or something along those lines but it won me over in a huge way and it's probably still my favorite metal album (admittedly I've got a ton of classic metal to hear yet)

I think Ihsahn actually said something about hysteria or sounding like someone with no solid ground to stand on?

A lot if it does sound like being whipped up in a tornado, Wizard Of Oz style

I once seen mention of classical composers who inspired them on Nightside, search engine is coming up with nothing, except that Nightside has been turned into classical sheet music, don't know if it has been performed.