IHSAHN – After

After the end of the Black Metal flame of Emperor, the turning wheels in the brains of Ihsahn, the vocalist/guitarist of Emperor, began to roll. He finally came up to a new career, a career that actually made him mature and more special than ever before on his musical years as a performer and a writer.

In 2005, Ihsahn began forming his new project under his own famous insignia. However, with the new project came a new style of music that is strictly amazing on all of its ends. The once black knight of Norwegian Black Metal is now a grown man that maintains a special musical style that has stretched far beyond the boundaries of old school Black Metal. After an intense work for five years, Ihsahn released three studio albums: The Adversary, angL and the new display, After.

Ihsahn’s style is not considered to be an enigma. Through his albums, you can sense the old habits of Black Metal from beginning to end. The classy riffs and inspiring keyboards, the ultra special blackish growls, and the strongest factor of them all, which is the cold and grey atmosphere that surrounds his entire world. Nevertheless, with this undying threat of the morbid cold depth there are new add-ons to Ihsahn’s repertoire as he added modernized Heavy/Progressive Metal plays and techniques followed by his own unsoiled and soft voice as an antagonistic mechanism to his demonic chants. With the ample new force of After, Ihsahn even added the saxophone as a lead Jazz instrument (played by Jørgen Munkeby). As for the rhythms of the album, it was decided to broadcast the uncommon heavyweight eight-string guitar sound.

After holds on to the same enchantments that its previous held. Each track presented has several unique and unusual features that defined Ihsahn ever since he started his solo operation. With his undeniable talents at composing, Ihsahn created another interesting and challenging new existence in the Metal world by issuing his own distorted yet appealing vision of the unknown. Through the newly reformed Progressive semi-Black Metal enterprise that takes shapes on “This Barren Land” , “A Grave Inversed” , “Frozen Lakes On Mars” and “Heavens Black Sea”, there is the feeling of old Emperor, yet with a different light of utmost maturity and the experience of years. Alongside the blunt heavy hitters there are the touchy “Austere” and “After”, two tracks that show the sensitive side of Ihsahn.

As the album progresses you will find two long delivered epics, “Undercurrent” and “On The Shores” (great saxophone solos and leads). All the way through this pair, you will notice the true melding between subgenres and why Ihsahn’s style is so distinctive than just Progressive and other melded like acts. However, the only flaw on those pairs is that in the latter there are a few parts that seem to make it stuck a bit, thanks to the enjoyable saxophone runs, the feeling subsided ever so slightly.