Album Review: Ihsahn - "Ihsahn - Studio Version"

Inevitably, some musicians wear out their welcome.  Their career spans too many years, crosses too many generations of audiences, or simply becomes stale as living becomes comfortable and new ideas come slowly or fade away into the clutter.

Ihsahn, by contrast, continues to stay vital as he hurtles toward fifty years old by continually challenging and expanding his horizons, this time, with a totally novel twist, even as the base music itself leans heavily into his black metal roots.

“Ihsahn” the album comes in two flavors – the studio album (as read about here,) and the orchestral album, which is simply the stripped-down score of the first.  You know, we say ‘simply,’ but consider the implications of what’s being said here.  Ihsahn went out and wrote an extreme metal album while collaborating with a symphony orchestra for the duration of the act.

Plenty of artists have tried their hand at symphonic albums.  Metallica, famously.  Serj Tankian, for another.  Hell, London Philharmonic took it upon themselves to produce symphonic albums for Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd (both of which are pretty good, though the Zeppelin one is stronger.)  So, Ihsahn didn’t create a revolutionary idea, but he did revolutionize the idea by charging an orchestra to keep pace with his home base of black metal.

The success of Ihsahn’s plan is evident early, as “The Promethean Spark” gallops ahead, sounding at its base like something from the latter days of Darkthrone, but the addition of the staccato violins in the blank spaces of the main riff lend a depth and presence to the sound that is thoroughly uncommon in this brand of music.  Sure, Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth and a pile of others have gone down this road to some degree, but the symphonic backing has always been manufactured.  The authenticity of “Ihsahn” is its strength – a truly organic melding of genuine symphony and metal.

Skip down to “Twice Born,” and the same kind of symbiosis of music that we talked about above rings true, but it’s by this point that the realization dawns that what Ihsahn really has done, and we mean this as a true compliment, is make a symphony sound small.  Not to say that it’s a chamber quartet or anything, but other bands who have gone the symphonic route have leaned heavily into the backing of the orchestra, which Ihsahn doesn’t do.  He instead forced them into his mold, made the strings fit the specific role he had for them, and still made his own guitars sing and dance in partnership with their newfound friends, rather than in competition, or worse, subservience to them.  (Parenthetically, it strikes that listening to the second version of this record, the strictly orchestral one, may be a sparse experience.  But that’s neither here nor there.)

“Ihsahn” is not always an easy listen – those without the ear for more extreme forms of metal may still find some of the constructions difficult - but even at its low moments the album is always at least academically interesting.  About three minutes into “Blood Trails to Love,” there’s a layered, almost jazz-y interlude that sounds out of place, but not in a bad way; it’s just a permutation of the two forces coming together in a unique way, leading to an unexpected, and thereby disjointed portion of the record.

There are, on the back end of the record, a couple of cuts that wander too long and get lost in the woods, so to speak.  Perhaps the temptation of working with all these elements was too overwhelming not to try and compose a singular opus, and there is some nobility in the attempt.  It’s not that these songs are bad, they’re just not interesting in the face of the far more novel fusions in the first half of the record.

Full marks to Ihsahn for pulling this monumental task together.  When his eponymous album sticks to task and keeps the durations down, he’s written as intriguing and compelling an album as any in the last few years.  Inconsistency is the worst criticism one can level at the record, and there are far worse sins.  Certainly the great moments, and even the merely good ones, are worth the time and examination.  Ihsahn, to this point, refuses to overstay his welcome.

Album Review: Cradle of Filth - "Hammer of the Witches"

When one thinks of extreme metal, it seems fair to say that Cradle of Filth are among the most prominent and successful of its practitioners and have already established a full legacy of music, controversy and worldwide performances.  Among their peers, the band has nothing left to prove.  Yet, Dani Filth and his always-rotating case of band members continues striving to create the darkest, loudest, downright spookiest metal horrorshow of them all, culminating this time with twisted themes of “Hammer of the Witches.”

This marks the first effort from the English band since the departure (again) of Paul Allender, erstwhile guitarist and unique shredder, who often added a certain undefinable something to the aura of the band’s music.  In his absence, Dani has brought in Marek ‘Ashok’ Smerda and Richard Shaw to play guitar, but the real headline seems to be the addition of Lindsay Schoolcraft, symphonic keyboardist and solo artist.  With her and the new axe-men in tow, “Hammer of the Witches” is an album full of the usual high drama and theatric presentation that fans have come to love from Cradle, all beginning, as they all seem to, with Dani’s train whistle scream.

That said, Cradle of Filth has long made their mark in extreme metal by practically reserving the trademark on the sound of a circular saw making intimate contact with a food processor, and nothing about that paradigm has shifted in the slightest.  You can throw darts at the album from one end to the other and pretty much find examples of the pure insanity that this band can engender.  What takes a discerning ear, however, is to hear the deeply rooted crunch of the band’s myriad riffs.  “Enshrined in Crematoria” changes sound a couple times, but the unmistakable buzz of prototype thrash lives within the veins of every moment, which is a sensation that permeates much of the record.

It is worth noting that while the general buzz of Cradle rumbles on in its own idiomatic style without Allender, there is a little something lost without his designed instability.  While still well executed, “Hammer of the Witches” feels more mechanical than the best Cradle albums, as though it doesn’t quite possess the same spirit of musical adventurism of records past.  Where “Deflowering the Maidenhead, Displeasuring the Goddess” moves with nice pace and puts together pieces that do shift the lens of the song, it’s hard to escape the feeling that there’s a wild left turn that’s somehow absent.  This feeling pops up now and again throughout the record and while it doesn’t subtract from the quality of the music that is there, it gives the sense that “Hammer” could have been a little more.

Where “Hammer of the Witches” gains back some ground from the loss of Allender’s unique craftwork is in the greater sense of well-timed harmony.  The band has been known on occasion to feature female vocals to add some profile and depth to the usual pastiche of grinding metal, but the employment of Lindsay Schoolcraft by the band gives the listener another voice to focus on, adding more to the mix than the usual window dressing of female influence.  Schoolcraft’s tone in her various appearances provide a melodic juxtaposition to Dani’s howling that works in the album’s favor.

As ever with Cradle of Filth, the phrase “acquired taste” comes into play.  That’s not an insult or a criticism of the product, merely a statement of fact.  Those who have never been able to tolerate the specific wanderings of Dani and company will not change their minds here.  Longtime fans should take note that “Hammer of the Witches” is not quite on the level of the two albums that precede it, but it is still a solid showcase that displays some of the band’s versatility.  Worth a spin.