“IF I ONLY HAD THIS PIECE OF GEAR, MY LIFE WOULD BE COMPLETE!”

The act of songwriting is much like telling a story. When it works, the music alone can do much of the heavy lifting, creating atmospheres, building worlds and drawing the audience in. That is how Ihsahn sees it now, seven albums and one EP into a solo career that has seen him pursue a progressive extreme metal sound that’s placed at a remove from the tempestuous, quasi-Wagnerian black metal he pioneered with Emperor. That is how he has seen it since the beginning, when, as a boy living on his parents’ farm near the Norwegian city of Notodden, he learned guitar by jamming along to Iron Maiden songs while playing bass on the pedals of his electric organ.

“I guess by instinct, all through my career, as a subconscious influence, I have just tried to recreate Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son by Maiden,” he says. “Because, in my head, just by nature, I know how I want a full-length album to feel. And in particular, that album. It’s conceptual. It’s folklore. I practically learned playing