Emperor

I've been meaning to get into this band for quite some time, and I liked what I heard by them (Even though that was a long while ago). Any good albums to start with?

2 GodlessEndeavor
try this:
IX Equilibrium (1999)

ps The Warriors of Modern Death - really perfect

If you start with one of the four full-lengths then you can't really go wrong. I think there's a very natural progression from album to album, while maintaining their individual sounds. (Awesome)

One off my all time favorite BM bands.

Besides the early demos and EP's, I prefer the first half of their career, musically; IX Equilibrium was good in its own way, but Prometheus I'm not really a fan of; it always seemed cluttered and messy to me, taking away from the majestic, flowing arrangements and adding a tad too much to the purely technical aspects of Emperor's sound. Nonetheless, they still reign as one of the best BM bands in many respects.

Yes, I'd agree with you about Prometheus, to a certain extent anyway. They'd quite clearly begun to distance themselves from the traditional black metal sound and experiment more with the technical and progressive espects. Personally, I really like Prometheus. I think it's a superb modern sounding black/metal album, the band had quite clearly reached a point where they were musically very mature - and I think that's part of the reason why it sounds as it does.

Random comment: I would LOVE Emperor to one day reform and write a new album. Though at the same time I can't help but feel it would just be like Prometheus Part II (Though, I'm not sure I would mind that..)

Funnily enough I like Ihsahn's solo material, and his Peccatum stuff, it's pretty much Prometheus alone that didn't do much for me. I find often that people really like Emperor's last two albums in favour of their other work, - or the very opposite, so I suppose each to their own

Emperor

Emperor are an extremely extraordinary and outstanding black metal band. I could have seen them live at BB King's in 2007, though it didn't work out. There was a local metal show on a local radio station and one of the hosts was giving away a ticket. I answered some trivia questions correctly and I won them. Well it turns out he was giving away his brother's ticket and his brother wanted to go. I never got the tickets to see them. Ah well, no big. I remember sometime, Atheist announced they were going to play a gig in NYC. I wanted to go to that more and I finally did this year.

Anyhow, Emperor's Scattered Ashes: A Decade Of Emperial Wrath compilation. Double CD! This is the only one I have. Not sure if I wanna get albums. This comp. has all of the awesome songs that makes Emperor so amazing. Plus it has some goodies (on disc 2) that are really worthwhile.

Emperor on GaySpace! Listen to 'em!

I liked "IX Equilibrium", some insane Black Metal there

NitrousBlond wrote:

Anyhow, Emperor's Scattered Ashes: A Decade Of Emperial Wrath compilation. Double CD! This is the only one I have. Not sure if I wanna get albums. This comp. has all of the awesome songs that makes Emperor so amazing.

Personally, I'd say it's definitely worth picking up the albums. While Scattered Ashes is an excellent compilation it doesn’t feature all of the awesome songs that make Emperor so amazing. There are a few superb tracks which have been missed off that compilation.