Recorded in 1998 and released the following year, Thorns Vs Emperor represented the first material to be recorded by Thorns main-man Snorre W. Ruch (ably assisted by Satyricon front-man Satyr Wongraven who provided vocals for the Thorns tracks and upon whose label the album was released) following his release from a lengthy, eight-year prison sentence which had been handed down to him as a result of his presence at the murder of Euronymous. Very much one of the progenitors of the nascent black metal scene as far back as 1988, Snorre found himself playing catch-up upon his release and the EP (which saw the two seminal acts covering each other’s work) was designed as a means of bringing Thorns to a wider audience via Emperor’s well-developed fan-base. The original release was a vicious eight-track blast of industrial-tinged black metal and neo-classical music (sometimes found with a second disc offering the original Thorns ‘Grymyrk’ and ‘Trondertun’ demos) but it has long been out of print and hard to find so this Peaceville reissue is a welcome reminder of the power of this odd, sometimes unwieldy, piece of work.
As with many of the current crop of Peaceville reissues, the package has been well put together with the artwork intact and a trio of bonus tracks which offer up a track not available on the original release as well as two (rather pointless) pre-production mixes of tracks on the album. Still, while the extras are a generous, if remarkable, addition to the package, the real question is whether this is a worthwhile outing and the answer is a cautious yes.
The reason for the caution has to lie with the fact that Thorns Vs Emperor is far from perfect. While the concept is an interesting one and the music often fascinating, the choices of tracks and disparate nature of the music on offer works only partially in the bands’ favour and as a record it lacks the flow of a more carefully thought-out album release. There are some excellent pieces of work on here for sure, but in this instance the separate tracks are worth more than the whole and there are elements that many casual fans will want to skip yet as a historical curio this works well and it’s a pleasure to revisit a record that has been hard to find outside of a second shop for many a year.
Opening with the pompous and gloriously overblown march of ‘Exordium’ (Emperor) the album truly arrives with Thorns’ masterful ‘Aerie Descent’ which features regal keyboards and a brilliantly unhinged guitar that sounds utterly horrible, especially in contrast to the digital perfection that surrounds it. Drifting through a variety of moods and ideas, ‘Aerie descent’ is a vicious and unrelenting piece that utilises the over-driven muscle of industrial music to augment the frozen might of traditional black metal and while it’s easy to imagine purists sneering at the track in disbelief, the icy elements of both genres suit each other well as Satyricon would go on to prove with ‘Rebel Extravaganza’. In retaliation, Emperor then turn in ‘I am’, an icy, distressing piece that welds a muscular guitar riff to the heaviest of industrial frames and then proceeds to smash the listener into pieces. Utterly devoid of humanity, with eerie samples and a strangely playful keyboard part driving the main body of the tune along, it feels very cut-and-paste and is less successful than the more traditionally song-based approach favoured by Thorns and yet it is still of interest thanks to the wealth of imagination employed in its construction. Still with Emperor, we then get to see a re-imagining of ‘Aerie descent’, a track so good it apparently had to be included three times on this particular release (it’s also present as a bonus track) and following the pneumatic drill ending of ‘I am’ it’s something of a relief to return to the grand, eloquent pastures that Emperor are more generally known for with the central riff in this incarnation sounding simply huge and vast choirs employed over the top of it. Arguably improving upon the Thorns version, Emperor turn in a suitably altered version so that it never really feels like the same track despite the identikit main riff. With one more track to go before handing over to Thorns, Emperor then lose the plot a little bit and turn in a synth-orchestral version of ‘thus march the night spirit’ which must have seemed like an intriguing idea at the time but which, unfortunately, comes off sounding like the soundtrack to a computer game from the days when games consoles favoured cartridges over CD with the attendant loss in sound quality. It’s a rare misstep from a usually excellent band and it sounds particularly twee coming after the monumental might of ‘Aerie descent’ and surely only the super-fan would argue that the track is more than of fleeting interest.
Returning to Thorns we then have ‘Melas Khole’ (originally ‘funeral marches to the grave’) which opens with a darkly cinematic feel before those trademark guitars come rumbling into view, vaguely atonal and still spitting and defiant even while contained within the parameters of the computer-based material. It’s a ferocious track once it builds up to speed and a welcome and abrasive blast, particularly following the odd, orchestral interlude that preceded it. Better still is the rampaging black metal of ‘The discipline of earth’, a furious assault that harnesses all that is great about black metal in one frozen tirade and which, along with both versions of ‘aerie descent’ justifies the price of this disc alone.  The final track, ‘cosmic keys’ is Thorns’ version of Emperor’s ‘Cosmic keys to my creation and times’ and it is a dark journey indeed, opening with a crushing weight in the darkness and droning guitars before taking the listener on a blackened trip to the very gates of darkness via a track that is painfully slow and almost sludge-like in its doom-laden grandeur.
With the real album over, the three bonus tracks offer slightly different interpretations of two tracks (‘aerie descent’ and ‘the discipline of earth’) as well as a track that may well be the Holy Grail for black metal fans: ‘you that mingle may’ featuring both Satyr and Fenriz. Featuring distorted vocals, syncopated guitars and a desperately overloaded bass, it’s a very welcome inclusion and as the dark, hate-filled vocals and corroded, acid-soaked riffs pile up around you it’s easy to recognise the combination of these three talents as something special indeed, even if the end result is often uncomfortable to listen to.
So, while Thorns Vs Emperor is not a perfect release by any means, it remains a flawed gem, still armed with claws and blood-lust but oddly disjointed in places (and that orchestral track really does destroy the flow in the middle of the record), it will nevertheless please black metal fans just to be able to get hold of this rare and interesting set and there are certain tracks on here that are more than worth the inexpensive asking price (just be sure you buy it from Peaceville rather than get violated down your local HMV). With Emperor now tragically in the realms of the past tense and Thorns still promising an album originally mooted in 2008 this is a chance to fill gaps in the collection and, as always, the attention to detail that has gone into putting together this package makes it a worthwhile addition to your collection. An icy piece of black metal history.
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