I’m not familiar with either his old band Emperor’s work (which is I know is a major oversight and I’ll be correcting it soon) or his first two solo albums, but Ihsahn’s After is utterly amazing. It’s top-shelf prog-ish black metal, but what makes it a really compelling and unique listen is the way he’s managed to weave avant-garde saxophone (think Ornette Coleman) into the music and have it sound completely organic. I know it’s barely February, but this is an early front-runner for album of the year.
I picked up (okay, downloaded from iTunes because it isn’t available in a physical form yet in the States) In Mourning’s Monolith because the guys over at MetalSucks compared them to the mighty Opeth. I don’t hear it–they remind me a lot more of Swallow the Sun’s brand of blackened doom than they do the progressive genre-fucks of Opeth. Regardless, it’s a majestic album and another album likely to end up on my year-end best-of list.
