Emperor/Wolves In The Throne Room @ Kings Theatre, Brooklyn, NY 5/10/25
Bill: Emperor/Wolves In The Throne Room
Venue: Kings Theatre, Brooklyn, NY
Date: 5/10/25
Door: got a ticket gifted
9:25pm Emperor
Active: 1991 (Notodden, Norway)
Latest Release: Prometheus: The Discipline of Fire and Demise (Candlelight, 2001), Live Inferno (Candlelight, 2009)
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Active: 2002 (Olympia, WA)
Latest Release: Crypt of Ancestral Knowledge (Relapse, 2023)
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Norwegian church arson proponents Emperor (guitarist Samoth did 16 months for his part in the burning of Skjold Church) appeared in Brooklyn's Kings Theatre, in the somewhat remote Flatbush neighborhood. Somehow their youthful indiscretion became the foundation of a long running career in Black Metal. Now they are in their 50's and the facepaint and trappings of youthful fervor has been cast aside. They may have become, in some way, what they initially hated. They helped to create a musical church and preside over an international flock. You can argue about their semantics, and whether they are possibly rooted in a neo-fascist worldview cloaked in anti-Christian theology, but they don't seem to outwardly proselytize which is how they can get visas to tour internationally. In the music, whatever they are howling is just another layer of music. If you are completely unfamiliar with the music and walk in on the band playing your aren't going to decipher a single word.
At the end of the day there were crossroads of functionality. When does "real" and "reputation" become "narrative?" What is the function of the state on the deviant in this process? Or the impact of the 16th Century historical artifact they permanently affixed their names to after burning it down? One of their original drummers, Faust, indeed cannot obtain a visa after his 14-year sentence for murder, but he can still play with them in Norway. It seems like the aggression carried the day yet, justice was meted out and melted into insignificance on the ever-distancing timeline.
When Anthems To The Welkin At Dusk came out in 1997 it was considered a signpost release that gained noticed outside of the constraints of the "Black Metal" genre. It came right before the 1998 book Lords of Chaos that helped make this marketable on the theatre level. Even nonreaders read that one as it detailed a never-ending quest for authenticity in a world of frauds. I saw that tour at Tramps back then. a large club in Chelsea Manhattan. After breaking up in 2001 and sporadically reforming, they seemingly reformed for good in 2016 without creating any new music. They do what they do and in recent years have settled into a dozen or so gigs a year to play. When you start zoning in you notice little guitar things that are more interesting than other things that exist. The follower will do the fist, horn and claw as well as the occasional headbang. I would say the "claw" is the main audience expression since it mirrors an emphatic outrage even if you can't understand a wind-whipped word.
Opening were Wolves In The Throne Room. Active over two decades, they mine the same droning turf and as you would expect, they have their moments. You would hope after 23 years and a large catalog that they would.
I had a conversation with a very young beer vendor that really knew nothing about these bands except what was in the theatre and asked me if I liked the opener. I told him they drone a bit but have their moments and that I hadn't seen Emperor in 30 years, they are the draw of the show here. "So it's a bit of nostalgia for you?" he responded. On some level he was trying to make sense of what this band was about, and I was trying to distil that in a sentence or two that he had to converse before going off to further sell his cans of beer and get his tips. Given this, I could only respond "in some ways." I think he got it. Nostalgia or checking in on a permanent continuum? I still can't hum a note after all these years.
FOR FURTHER REVIEW:
Mayhem/Mortiis @ Irving Plaza 3/24/25
Mortiis @ Le Poisson Rouge 9/8/24
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