'IF I ONLY HAD THIS PIECE OF GEAR, MY LIFE WOULD BE COMPLETE!'

NORWEGIAN BLACK METAL TRAILBLAZER IHSAHN ON WHY HE SPENDS TOO MUCH MONEY ON GEAR HE DOESN’T NEED, AND WHY PLAYING PROGRESSIVE MUSIC IS ABOUT THINKING BIG, NOT SHREDDING HARD...

- Jonathan Horsley

The act of songwriting is much like telling a story. When it works, the music alone can do much of the heavy lifting, creating atmospheres, building worlds and drawing the audience in. That is how Ihsahn sees it now, seven albums and one EP into a solo career that has seen him pursue a progressive extreme metal sound that’s placed at a remove from the tempestuous, quasi-Wagnerian black metal he pioneered with Emperor. That is how he has seen it since the beginning, when, as a boy living on his parents’ farm near the Norwegian city of Notodden, he learned guitar by jamming along to Iron Maiden songs while playing bass on the pedals of his electric organ.

“I guess by instinct, all through my career, as a subconscious influence, I have just tried to recreate Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son by Maiden,” he says. “Because, in my head, just by nature, I know how I want a full-length album to feel. And in particular, that album. It’s conceptual. It’s folklore. I practically learned to play guitar from that album. Another album that was huge for me was King Diamond’s Them, and consequently Conspiracy – both full-story concept albums.”

Ihsahn found these concepts totally immersive; the ebb and flow of these albums interpreted as dramatic arcs within the song-craft, each track essential to the next, the sequencing similarly vital. Are the likes of Iron Maiden and King Diamond prog? Maiden’s latter-period sound has evolved towards long-form progressive compositions, but the King? No. That seems too much of a reach. Ihsahn, however, for his sins and to his bemusement, has found himself a paragon of progressive extreme metal. He sees progressive music as a state of mind, one that guides his process.

NORSE CODE