IHSAHN, THE EMPEROR MASTERMIND WHO TOOK HEAVY MUSIC TO NEW HEIGHTS, ON THE MERITS OF TECHNOLOGY AND HOW EXTREME METAL STRUMMING HAS A LOT IN COMMON WITH ACOUSTIC PLAYING
By Amit Sharma
MANY OF USwill remember getting our first delay pedal, treasuring those fond memories of how one clever little box can make an unaccompanied guitar sound thicker, deeper and, on certain settings, almost orchestral. For Norwegian musician Vegard Sverre Tveitan, better known around the world as Ihsahn — the man who pioneered symphonic black metal in Emperor before pursuing more atmospheric endeavors as a solo artist — the first echoes he employed were right outside his front door.
“I grew up on a farm with a lake in front and mountains on the other side,” he says, looking back on his earliest memories as a musician. “I didn’t have a delay pedal as a 10-year-old, so I would take my amp onto the veranda, and the mountains would throw back echoes. I guess nature has always been a big part of my music. We tend to build on what we know and what’s around us, taking influence from our surroundings. It’s a very primal part of human nature.”
A lot has changed in music technology since those formative years, Ihsahn admits, pointing to how he’s chosen to move with the times instead of linger in the shadows of a sentimental past. On his latest self-titled album — which consists of 11 tracks that exist in both metallic and orchestral forms — he’s using amps that exist only inside a computer and Aristides composite guitars that contain no wood whatsoever. Such concepts would have seemed rather far-fetched to the young musician dragging his amp onto that veranda.
“There were a lot of Neural DSP plugins, as well as digital Quad Cortex sounds,” he says. “I see them as very practical tools for capturing ideas and inspiration. It’s a million miles from the little Fostex recorder I started with. I remember me and my dad making our own cover of the Iron Maiden song ‘Powerslave’ — the drums and bass were from keyboards, I played guitar and my dad sang over it. That’s where my fascination with recording began.”
As for the Aristides guitars, which are made out of a patented composite material called Arium, it was Periphery guitarist Mark Holcomb who alerted Ihsahn to the Dutch company’s innovations. Skeptical at first, as any player would be, further investigation would reveal that their instruments were more tha
