February AOTM #1: Prometheus

Paul Taylor
5 hours ago
3 min read

Album of the Month: Prometheus: The Discipline of Fire & Demise by Emperor

From as early as their debut album In The Nightside Eclipse in 1994, Emperor stood head-and-shoulders above their contemporaries in the 2nd Wave of Black Metal in terms of ambition. Groups like Darkthrone and Mayhem were more important and influential in their own ways, but Emperor were unmatched in their epic melodicism and the monumental scale of their atmosphere, creating music to fit alongside the fantastical castles adorning their albums. So-called Symphonic Black Metal was a beast largely their own, a retooling of the palette of black metal for an entirely new aesthetic.

But album-by-album the band grew more and more experimental, driven more and more by technical riffs and off-kilter rhythms. This culminated with their fourth and final album, Prometheus: The Discipline of Fire & Demise, a progressive black metal album that feels properly transgressive within both prog metal and the bands' native black metal. Beyond even it's technical elements, the album is strongly defined by it's conceptual and compositional complexity. Appropriate to its name Prometheus centers around the Greek mythical figure Prometheus, who stole fire and first gifted it to humanity.

Prometheus is in so many ways an utterly overblown album: chock-a-block full of warbling clean vocals, shimmering keyboards, synthesized fanfare-style horns, and gratuitous guitar virtuosity on tracks like "The Tongue of Fire". But what makes the album work so well is its fairly consistent level of heaviness, where even the more explicitly melodic sections like in "The Prophet" are paired with cyclic and never-quite-resolving riffs, where the driven, choral vocals are contrasted with utter chaos in the guitars.

The opening track "The Eruption" is possibly the best microcosm for the whole record. An unbelievably crisp production and constantly shifting structure that flips from groovy chugging riffs to violent minor chords all accentuate Ihsahn's gnarled vocal performance. The drumming here is also exceptional with a massive variety in parts and intensity. The drumming also highlights one of the albums' greatest strengths: its production. Put on a pair of headphones and turn on stereo audio: each instrument is so clearly defined, with space to breathe around it. You can easily separate the deep double-kicks, tremolo riffs, and the theatrical keyboards. "Empty" showcases this extremely well, with the synths and keys sharing equal space with the squealing riffs and snappy blast beats. A favourite moment of mine on the album is when those pulsating synths first enter on "Empty", powerful in a way totally separate from Ihsahn's vocals and squirreling lead guitar.

Conceptually and lyrically the album, while not quite a full-blown rock opera, progresses in a fairly straightforward and narrative manner, linking each track to the ones that follow. The lyrics follow the deposed king Prometheus, but capture different themes and ideas in each track: from self preservation and individualism on "Depraved" to perseverance in the face of defeat on "Grey". The mix of vocal styles here also help exaggerate this narrative, centering tracks around the doubled-up vocals on the choruses.

Black metal at its inception was a subgenre defined by a refusal to follow a set of perceived rules around what extreme metal was supposed to sound and look like, and what it was supposed to stand for. But so quickly the genre became immersed in a culture of exclusion and gatekeeping, where the infamous Mayhem guitarist Euronymous would proclaim specific characteristics or ethos's that were Trve Black Metal and which were "false". It's pretty understandable when perpetual outcast bands like Enslaved or Borknagar buck those trends and rules, but Emperor were always core to the initial slate of 2nd Wave bands, part of Euronymous' Black Circle. And damn if I don't respect musicians who don't get caught up in genre politics or adhering to what others expect out of them.