Emperor - IX Equilibrium

This is Emperor's third album. The style of the music has a bit changed. While on the previous albums the keyboards were very dominating, this time, they are more in the background, giving the guitars the opportunity to develop more. And the vocals are also much more in the foreground than on Anthems which I appreciate very much, because it was sometimes difficult to hear them. Concerning the speed of their music, Emperor haven't changed. It's still lightning fast, and very complex.
The album features 8 (well in fact 9 but the last lasts only a few seconds and is the end of the eighth) songs (2 more on the digipack version which I don't have). There's even one song which you could call "The True Metal song" : The source of Icon E. There they use clean vocals which remind you of True Metal or Power Metal. But no fear that's the only song. The other songs are all Black Metal or technical Death Metal.
My favourite songs are "Curse you all men", "Decristallizing reason", "An elegy of Icaros" and the last one "Of Blindness & subsequent seers".
All in all it's a very good album, but I warn you you have to listen to it quite often before you start liking it. It was the case for me, after having heard Anthems and "In the Nightside Eclipse" this one was kinda strange, due to the style change. There are no real refrains in the songs, so they're difficult to listen to. But after a certain time I started to like it and now I listen to it nearly every day.
Ok in my eyes it can't really reach Anthems' beauty but it's still a very very good piece of work. I's moreover sure that Emperor have like Satyricon seen that those who don't change don't go anywhere. Ok it's no longer true Black Metal, I'd rather call it technical Death Metal. As I supposed a lot of people don't like this album because Emperor have changed their style. But I don't care, this is simply a great album.
Hail Emperor !

Lyrics to this album

9/10		Svafnir (2000)

1999
Candlelight
9 tracks
43:57 minute

01 Curse you all Men !
02 Decrystallizing Reason
03 An Elegy of Icaros
04 The source of Icon E
05 Sworn
06 Nonus Aequilibrium
07 The Warriors of Modern Death
08 Of Blindness and Subsequent Seers