Legendary Black Metallers EMPEROR Talk About Decision To Reunite

October 1, 2005

Black metal legends EMPEROR reunited after four years to play a surprise three-song set for Norwegian metal magazine Scream's 15-year anniversary which took place at Oslo's Rockefeller Friday night (Sept. 30). Norwegian metal radio show "Tinitus" was at the venue to witness the historical moment. In exclusive interview conducted in English with the radio show producer Patrizia Mazzuoccolo prior to the gig, original members Ihshan and Samoth, alongside drummer Trym, discussed the reason behind the event. "We are not playing a full show tonight," Samoth explained. "This is a short teaser that we are using to announce full headline shows we are doing next year. This is a cooler way of announcing them instead of telling people through our web site." It was announced last night after the band's set that EMPEROR will headline the Inferno festival (April 13-15, 2006) in Oslo, Norway and Wacken Open Air (August 3-5, 2006) in Wacken, Germany next year.

The illustrious black metal band, whose split in 2001 took the scene by surprise, performed three tracks — "The Loss And Curse Of Reverence", "I Am The Black Wizards", "Inno A Satana" — and received a rapturous welcome by an ecstatic crowd. Announced as a "big surprise band," the whole arrangement was so secret that neither organizers of the magazine's anniversary party nor the band itself told their closest friends and associates until yesterday — amongst others, original EMPEROR drummer Faust, a member of SCUM alongside guitarist Samoth, was not present. "It's been a pain in the ass to keep it from friends actually," offers Samoth, "but we had to do it properly or not do it at all so we decided to keep it as secret as we could. Faust is doing a show in Notodden with BLOOD TSUNAMI tonight so he couldn't have made it anyway…"

With Samoth and Trym recording a third ZYKLON album in November and Ihshan releasing a solo album in March next year, what are the probabilities of a new EMPEROR release?

Hear the whole exclusive interview on "Tinitus" on Wednesday, October 5 on Norwegian national radio channel P3. "Tinitus" is on every Wednesday from 20:00 (8:00 p.m.) to 22:00 (10:00 p.m.) on P3. The show is also available on the Internet: www.nrk.no/tinitus.

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