BIO

Since 1991, IHSAHN has defied expectations and pushed boundaries.

Forming Emperor at just 16-years-old, the band’s leader set the template for bombastic, melodic black metal on the game-changing debut ‘In The Nightside Eclipse’ (1995). Followed by the instant classic ‘Anthems To The Welkin At Dusk’ (1997), IHSAHN carved out his maverick reputation as extreme forms of music twisted expectations throughout the end of the 20th Century.

Launching his solo career in 2006 with ‘The Adversary’ he has sought to maintain the black metal blueprint that he helped devise with the world shattering EMPEROR, while mischievously exploring progressive dreamscapes, avant garde jazz, electronica, darkwave, ear-crushing tech metal and ambient meditations. He returned to that early black metal sound on his solo project, ‘Telemark.’

“For many years I felt that I should do something purely black metal again,” he says, explaining how this eventually led to the abstract basis behind ‘Telemark’ and ‘Pharos’. “However, I would feel very limited by that in the form of an album. And then I would have wanted an outlet for the opposite.

I’ve done the full black metal thing in the past but I’m also not a pop artist. I think it would be hard for me to fill an album within that format. This has been a challenge of limiting myself to a certain expression.”