Ihsahn on the challenges and rewards of his ambitious new album

IHSAHN Drops New Single 'The Distance Between Us' From Forthcoming  Self-Titled Album - Loaded Radio

Ihsahn, the Norwegian progressive metal luminary, recently unleashed his eighth studio album, marking a bold departure from conventional creative norms. In a daring move, he released two intricately linked versions of the same opus: one encapsulating the essence of progressive metal, the other steeped in full symphonic grandeur. This ambitious project, meticulously crafted over three years, sees Ihsahn take on the roles of both composer and producer, pushing his artistic boundaries to the brink.

The metal rendition of the album, meticulously mixed by Jens Bogren, stands as a testament to Ihsahn’s relentless pursuit of sonic innovation. Conversely, the orchestral iteration, deftly mixed by Joel Dollié, adds a new dimension to his musical repertoire.

Reflecting on the arduous journey of creation, Ihsahn says, “On average, I’ve been releasing a full-length album every second year since I was 16. And, you know, that has given me some opportunity to explore different options, so for my eighth full-length solo record, I thought, ‘okay, how can I do what I do best, but also raise the bar tenfold?” This introspective exploration led him to embark on a path that merges his signature black metal roots with orchestral flourishes inspired by cinematic maestros such as Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams.

The album’s genesis can be traced back to the simple elegance of a piano, serving as the catalyst for an ambitious musical odyssey. “At the heart of what I do is black metal, extreme distorted guitars and screaming,” Ihsahn explains, “but since the earliest Emperor recordings you’ll hear the keyboard parts influenced by classic soundtracks.” This dichotomy laid the groundwork for a dualistic approach, wherein metal and orchestral elements intertwine to create a harmonious symphony of sound.

Accompanying Ihsahn on this transcendent journey are Tobias Ørnes Andersen and Tobias Solbakk on drums and percussion, along with a captivating performance by his son Angell Solberg Tveitan on additional percussion. The ethereal strains of violins, courtesy of Chris Baum, add an enchanting layer to the album’s rich tapestry.

As if the dual-record weren’t ambitious enough, Ihsahn weaves a conceptual narrative that binds both versions together—a Wagnerian tale of heroism and redemption. Though reticent to divulge too much, he remains confident that listeners who delve deep will unearth layers of meaning waiting to be discovered.

Montreal Rocks chatted with Ihsahn about the project and how he’s always keen to keep trying new things with his music.

Watch the full interview below:

It’s been a few days since the new album was released. What’s been the most surprising about the reaction you’ve had so far?

It’s hard to tell, really. I think I’ve been very pleasantly surprised that people seem to be enjoying this. It’s been a long time since it was finished. So I’ve delivered masters for the final albums on the 1st of April, I think. So it’s been a long time finished in that regard. Then it’s all the other things that have been added to it. The atmos mixing, all the videos, all the visuals, everything. So it’s been a long journey. Now it’s more like relief that everything is out there. But I haven’t had any particular reactions but people seem to be enjoying it. I’ve gotten a lot of feedback that I hope this album would feel like a whole cohesive thing. All along, I’ve gotten feedback that people feel like they’re watching a story. They’re watching an imaginary movie kind of thing. That was a lot of the inspiration going into it. So I guess that was a pleasant surprise.

So, having the two sides to this album, the metal album and the orchestral version, did you have a kind of a vision of how people would choose to listen to the music side by side?

No, not really. For better or worse, I don’t really have much thought for how people will perceive it. Because I’ve been doing this for the better part of 30 years now, and if it’s one thing I know, I have no way of knowing how people will respond to anything. So I never make that part of the plan. The only rule of thumb that I could rely on is I try to make the best possible album that I can with the time and experience and resources I’ve had available. And that’s what it is. And so far, people have seemed to have been enjoying what I do to the extent that I get to do it again and again. I think people are drawn to something that is real for its own thing and not pretending to be anything else. So I try to stick with that, if that makes sense.

These days, with streaming and everything, a lot of people kind of jump in and out of certain tracks, and some might even put an album on shuffle. But obviously, you benefit from this album by sitting down and listening to it in its entirety in the correct order.

So it’s kind of doing everything wrong in 2024. Not a double album, even. It’s like a dual album with two parallel storylines that lead into each other. And it’s a cohesive narrative behind everything and reoccurring themes. That’s a super tall order for young people’s attention span that is literally no longer than 10 seconds, it seems. So in that respect, I’m doing everything wrong. But the generation of music that I was brought up on, where albums to me were a cohesive whole and not just a collection of songs. And you can still see that, we still revere albums like Dark Side Of The Moon, or I was a huge Iron Maiden fan growing up. So it’s just for me, my kind of attachment to something like Seventh Son of Seventh Son or Powerslave or any of these albums that when I listened to them, it’s almost like you could sense smells and stuff from back in that time. And you look at the artwork and listen to the music and it kind of makes sense. And I would read all the liner notes and all the lyrics and everything to kind of get it. And fortunately, I would say, I had no opportunity to see what the guys in Iron Maiden had for breakfast that morning. You know what I mean? The mythical element of it was still very much alive. And that was part of the experience. And I think that is the blueprint for me for what constitutes an album.

How do you keep a balance between telling a story and still allowing the listener to kind of have their own interpretation of it?

It’s not important for me that people get my story. I feel that by writing just this backbone, this kind of synopsis of a novel, as a backbone to write the lyrics and to follow with like motifs and a musical ebb and flow of a traditional story is enough hopefully for people to get a sense of that cohesiveness and feel the storyline. And of course you will get hints in a sense from the lyrics and titles and everything. But then again, how deep you choose to go and how interesting you feel that is, of course, up to each individual. And I like to think that in spite of all its layers and the complexity of how it was put together, I like to think that it’s still very accessible upfront, if you will.

I’ve sometimes compared it to a building. Like I wanted to make something impressive as a big building. And some people might watch it from the outside. It’s like, that’s a cool building and move on. Others might want to go inside. And I tried to decorate the rooms inside too. So for those inclined to do so, hopefully there’s more that can spark the imagination and further deepen the experience of the music over time. And this is just like an ideal scenario that I could hope for. Because just on the premises of me loving those albums myself, that I kind of experienced something new. And I felt like I found a new layer to it on each repeated listen. You know, that’s how I grew very attached to some of these albums growing up.

So where did this album actually start? What was the initial spark for it?

Like with any album, there’s nothing and then suddenly, I get kind of an instinctual notion of what the album sounds like and feels like, without any chords or anything or music. It’s like an instinct. And that usually sticks with me pretty hard. And it’s all about trying to find, you know, then figure out the sounds, the imagery, the scenes, if you will, that need to be in there. You kind of carve it out over time. And on a more practical note, you know, I’ve been doing a lot of experimental albums, like a bit to this side, a bit of that to that side, just to explore. And it’s been a long time since my last full-length. And I’ve gotten to do a lot of other things in the meantime. So I think it was natural for me to kind of come back down the centre, doing black metal, but traditional symphony orchestra set up and core, the archetypes in the lyrics, and a very traditional storyline in many respects, but to try to take all these kinds of familiar ingredients to me since the very beginning of my career, and try to elevate those ingredients into something new.

As I said, try to keep one foot in the safe zone and one in chaos. That’s usually where I find I do my best work. And sometimes that is the black metal voice, distorted guitars, this is kind of my most fluent way of expressing myself. And then I try to add elements that are unfamiliar, that I can see if I can make things melt in a way. But this time, it was a different approach. And also, you know, to rely on things that are familiar to me, but just to go much, much deeper. And that was the challenge.

I wanted to pay homage to the early influences of soundtracks; Jerry Goldsmith, and John Williams and Bernard Herman, you know, the kind of soundtracks that were a gateway for me into orchestral music and my interest for that. And to take a deep dive into those kinds of harmonic textures, etc. And as I’ve been doing a lot of, you know, supplementing my music with orchestral elements over time, of course, I’ve always heard how a lot of the more subtle details disappear, and of course, in a dense mix. So I kind of had this idea of, in a blunt way, maybe writing an imaginary soundtrack within the context of a black metal record. Some people have thought that I’ve kind of done an orchestral version of the same music, but literally, the orchestral version is the exact same musical stems that’s in the metal version. So that was the puzzle. I wanted to make an orchestral arrangement that could work as a support for the metal arrangement but also function individually as its own thing. That was kind of a big challenge.

Was that duality there from the beginning of the project? Or did it reveal itself over time?

That was the plan from the beginning. So literally, I wrote both albums kind of at the same time, because I sketched it out as a piano short score, with all the elements that need to go in just with piano sounds. And then literally just kind of assigned the bass parts to the bass instruments, whether that was an electric bass or bassoons and cellos and contrabass, or chordal structures that would go to the guitars, and maybe the flute section or the brass section.

It’s a very ambitious project. I think that’s an understatement.

Very much so. But only, you know, subjectively from my part, it’s ambitious, but for me personally, the most gratifying side of this whole project is probably how much I learned in the process about orchestration, for sure, you know, and not only voicings and everything but just like creating those more subtle organic textures, the background textures of woodwinds and everything. There were so many layers. And from a technical programming point of view, you know, like using all the sample libraries and like the technical side of all of that, when it’s supposed to be that detailed, I had these kinds of rules for myself to steer away from any diatonic chord progressions, to really force myself to focus on polychords and octatonic scales and messianic modes, all these kind of harmonic colours that I associate with my favourite soundtracks, but that theoretically and practically is something that I never really got a grasp of.

It was extremely interesting and super hard because I have no musical education, you know, like all self-taught. And I know, of course, that there are young kids who just do orchestral scores like this for breakfast on their laptops. But for me, it was a lot of new elements. I’ve been dabbling before, but this was like a whole different level for me.

Is working with an actual live orchestra something that you would be interested in?

Yeah, for sure. But mind you, only if it was a very good live orchestra. And I get this all the time now, like, oh, will you be performing this music with a live orchestra? Of course, I’d love to. But it would have to be then, in the capacity of that actually being better. And, of course, it would be objectively better if it’s an amazing orchestra. But I know this from colleagues who have been doing both mockups and also adding orchestral real orchestra elements to their music that you think it will immediately be better. But there are so many orchestras that can do orchestral music, but to get them to just play, you know, get the transients in time with this kind of production, or some of the more intense hybrid soundtracks, the scores, you know, it’s quite a different thing. It’s not as fluent as some of the orchestral things, you know, it’s a different world. So, if you’re supposed to do something like that and make it worthwhile, it would need to be an orchestra that could actually deal with those technical aspects of it. And I had checked, and I’m figuring it’s at least like 100,000 euros to start a project like that. But I literally did write it as if I wrote it for a real orchestra. I had separate writings for contrabass, cellos, violas, first violin, second violins, you know, every instrument; you could literally print that out. Maybe someday, maybe if people enjoy the album, and someone has an idea of making some event down the line. I don’t know.

Was any orchestral or classical music being played in your house when you were growing up?

No, not really.

When did you get introduced to it?

Through horror movie soundtracks. Early teenage years, you know, playing heavy metal, watching films and kind of indulging in everything that was dark and dangerous. Jerry Goldsmith’s The Omen is probably one of my absolute favourite soundtracks. It’s a gateway. And you listen to the Imperial March. I’m like, oh, John Williams. Wow. And then someone’s like, “Have you heard Gustav Holz, The Planets?” And then the ball starts rolling in a sense. It’s with everything. If it’s literature or metal music, it’s just following the prompts, you know.

Would you like to do soundtrack work?

I’d love to. It’s been a dream of mine for many, many years. But then again, I’m kind of realistic that, of course, what I’ve done with this album, you could say it’s a showreel without all the extra extremity of the guitars and screaming and everything. That’s too much, probably for most people. So I’m not disillusioned about any of that. But then again, you see people with a less traditional background, musical background, doing soundtracks, you know, by no comparison, but something like Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, you know. Ludwig Gernson has more of a pop-producer-rock background. I think even Hans Zimmer doesn’t really read and write music that well, you know, he comes from a pop experimental, programming kind of background. So it’d be amazing to be part of something like that.

This feels like a soundtrack to a movie that doesn’t exist yet.

Oh, thank you. I appreciate that.

So congratulations. As a fan, it’s really nice to see you still pushing the boundaries after all these years.

Well, again, that’s what it’s all about. I’m trying to make the best album that I can with the resources that I have, which include hindsight and the courage, if you will, to take chances. Because if I make something I’ve already done, what’s the point?

Ihsahn is out now via Candlelight Records

Share this :
FacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail