EMPEROR In The Nightside Eclipse (1994) Cassette

There are maybe five albums that defined black metal as a genre. In The Nightside Eclipse is one of them, and it came out when Ihsahn was nineteen years old.

Recorded in 1993 and released in 1994 on Candlelight, this is Emperor at their most untamed, symphonic black metal before symphonic black metal became its own industry. The orchestral layers, the raw production, the sheer ambition of what they were trying to do in a Norwegian studio with almost nothing, it's still staggering. This isn't nostalgia bait. It's a document of a scene inventing itself in real time, and owning it on cassette is the correct format for something this cold and this dark.

Format: Cassette. Full-length album. Origin: Norway. Genre: Black Metal.

Fans of: Burzum, Darkthrone, Enslaved, Mayhem.