MP3: Ihsahn - Unhealer
You'd be forgiven for mistaking this track for new Opeth, after all that is Mikael Åkerfeldt providing guest vocals. Careful listeners will note however that the music has a distinct blackened Norwegian feel, somewhat akin to Arcturus or Spiral Architect, another not-quite-so-surprising revelation when you learn that the latter's rhythm section of Asgeir Mickelson and Lars Norberg (drums and bass respectively) performs here as well. What is surprising though, is how much heavier this sounds than any of Ihsahn's recent work, including his previous solo album "The adversary" and his work with Peccatum. I actually wasn't expecting to like this at all since I fell off the Emperor bandwagon around the time of "IX equilibrium" and haven't been too impressed with any of the members work since then outside of Zyklon. It's interesting - I still hear the epic symphonic elements of Emperor, but there's a far stronger death-metal undercurrent mixed in with various progressive/prog-rock touches. This particular track "Unhealer" has way more prominent "clean" parts than the rest of the album, but it's balanced out by some of Ihsahn's best, most straight-up metal work ever (well, at least since Thou Shall Suffer). It's worth noting too, again not that you should really be surprised, that the guitar playing is phenomenal. Also, you can't hear it so much here, but there's also a huge similarity to latter-era Death going on. It makes me realize that Ihsahn's rasp really isn't that far off from Chuck Schuldiner's vox on "The sound of perseverance". All in all, I'm very impressed.
Ihsahn - Unhealer