Every year, thousands of metalheads converge on France for one of the biggest metal festivals in existence. Hellfest is a force to be reckoned with and an unforgettable show to boot. It looks like this year's event will be no exception.
Take a look see at the bands announced so far down below. If you like what you see, prepare yourselves for one helluva show (pun intended) June 20th - 22nd. The festival will take place in Clisson, France. If you're able to go, you better go.
So a little bit ago I clued you guys in on the new Emperor reunion and the announcement of a Wacken headlining appearance next year. I also discussed the possibilities of a new album, a headlining tour and some U.S. festival dates. Read about all that here.
Well today I’m back to give you more news, some of it good, a lot of it disappointing. First off, the band, through Ihsahn’s facebook, has announced this:
“EMPEROR will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of "In The Nightside Eclipse" at next year´s Wacken Open Air. Ihsahn and Samoth will be joined by Faust on drums, and they will perform the album in its entirety.”
That’s cool, I’m always into seeing bands perform full albums live. I think its the best live representation of an album, obviously, and as someone who really looks at albums as opposed to songs, this is the ideal for me. I’m really hoping to be able to see Between the Buried and Me and The Ocean perform their newest releases in full soon. Emperor will be playing more festivals that are yet to be announced.
So now for the bad news. Here’s the rest of the earlier quoted statement:
“There will be no new studio album or a world wide tour, only a few exclusive festival appearances next year, to mark the celebration of this landmark album.”
Okay so no new album, no world tour. Check and check. But read into this a little more and I have more bad news for you. Faust will be playing drums for these appearances. Faust is a convicted murderer. Really don’t think he’ll be getting a US visa anytime soon. So unless they're going to ditch him, it looks like US festivals, like the assumed Maryland Deathfest, are out of the question as well. Bummer.
So if the headline of this post didn’t make this clear enough, black metal legends Emperor have decided to reunite, according to Terrorizer, and are confirmed to headline the Wacken Open Air festival in 2014. Black metal fans rejoice, scream and start a circle pit wherever you are, right now, Emperor is back!
Wacken is pretty much the top dog when it comes to metal festivals so it’s obviously quite the big deal to headline this festival. Hopefully, and probably, this is not going to be a one off thing. It’d be nice to see Emperor playing festivals all over Europe as well. It’d be even nicer to see Emperor hop across the Atlantic and play some shows in the U.S. of A. The Maryland Death Fest, where Ihsahn played a little ago.
Even cooler though would be a new Emperor release. It’s been 12 years since 2001’s “Prometheus: The Discipline of Fire & Demise” and a lot has changed in the realm of symphonic metal. It might be time, like Gorguts with tech death and Carcass with their melodic death/grind metal did this year, to attempt to reclaim the throne they helped to build. Ihsahn has really been killing it with the solo releases lately and maybe it’s time he bring some of that over to the Emperor side of things. But not to get your hopes up for nothing, Emperor did reunite shortly in 2007 for some shows, and there certainly was no album then, so I guess who knows. Still this is definitely nothing to complain about.
Links: Facebook // Official Website // Twitter
