Reviews list for Ihsahn - angL (2008)

Ihsahn (b. Vegard Sverre Tveitan), as I'm sure everyone already knows, was the mainman behind black metal legends Emperor. Even before Emperor had been put to sleep he had formed a progressive / avant-garde outfit called Peccatum, playing alongside his wife, vocalist / keyboard player Ihriel (who, incidentally, is also the sister of Einar Solberg of Leprous). At this point Ihsahn was way more interested in the progressive and avant-garde than in continuing to recycle the same old material in Emperor and so the band split in 2001. Five years later and Ihsahn was ready to release his first solo album, The Adversary which he put out on his own Mnemosyne Productions label in April of 2006. Now, personally, I was a massive Emperor fan at this time (and still am) and, to be honest, I really wasn't ready for Ihsahn's new direction and never really engaged with The Adversary at all, so despite giving it cursory attention I rapidly dismissed it.

So a couple of years passed and Ihsahn released a follow-up entitled angL, again released on Mnemosyne in May of 2008. I decided to give Ihsahn another go at this point and actually bought a very nice slipcard-enclosed CD copy which I still have. Sadly, I still couldn't really get to grips with this Ihsahn music that wasn't Emperor and the CD was put on a high shelf to be forgotten... until now that is. Thankfully, and in no small part due to the influence of my membership of Metal Academy, I have become more open to music that pushes boundaries and leads me out of my own personal comfort zone, which Ihsahn's music most definitely does, and listening to this afresh, I now have a much more positive connection to it than I had previously and, indeed, derived a great deal from it and some idea of why Ihsahn felt he could no longer be confined by the limits of Emperor.

Despite saying this, angL actually opens with a track (Misanthrope) that could easily have been released on an Emperor album without raising any eyebrows. However, second track Scarab reveals more of what solo Ihsahn is all about, a song that is far more progressive metal than black metal, despite his typical black metal vocals, with several twists and turns that also illustrate how his songwriting had developed and illustrate why he was unable to stay within the confines of a purely black metal outfit. The next track Unhealer has a guest vocal performance from a certain Mikael Akerfeldt, a musician whose quest for ever more complex musical expression is something I'm sure Ihsahn could identify with at this point. This is quite a melodic little number and suits Akerfeldt's vocals beautifully, with a nice light/dark contrast between gentler, clean sung parts and the heavier sections complete with Mikael's distinctive death growls that makes for a track that will sound familiar to Opeth fans.

Emancipation is a weird track, it is another melodic number, but it's verses sound, in a weird way, a bit like David Bowie and Robert Fripp and another nice melo-prog number. Malediction is another more black metal infused track, in similar style to the opener, Misanthrope that is reminiscent of some of the material on IX Equilibrium such as Curse You All Men! or An Elegy of Icaros. The Alchemist is another track that contains Ihsahn's clean vocals and I'm sorry, but he really does remind me of David Bowie with his intonation (and I don't think this is a bad thing - I love Bowie!) Some great guitar work on this track too that makes it a bit of a standout for me, although everyone else seems to hate it.

Elevator is a dark, disorienting track that feels like a journey into another dimension where up and down, left and right are indistinct as Ihsahn's crooning, cajoling voice anchors the song and provides a stable focus. Next up is Threnody and this starts off sounding very much like Benighted from Opeth's Still Life before opening up with some more nice guitar work. Closer Monolith is once again a more straight-up melodic black metal offering, although it does have a softer proggy centre, and it's weird that all three of the more black metal tracks on angL are the ones that begin with the letter "M" - not a coincidence I'm sure.
Mikael Akerfeldt's presence on angL is no coincidence either I don't think, as it feels like Ihsahn was trying to take a similar kind of direction with his own music as Akerfeldt was doing with Opeth at this point (Watershed was released the same year) and may have been keen on swapping ideas with Opeth's creative mastermind. This is certainly nothing like as difficult a listen as I remember it being, it is probably still 30-40% black metal and quite a bit of it is exceedingly melodic and, dare I say, even catchy, with the avant-garde being (thankfully) non-existent. I'd better move the CD from it's position on the highest shelf to a place where I can reach it much more easily as I think I'll be coming back to this one pretty damn soon!