Emperor

Emperor, “A Fine Day to Die”

Among the various albums to emerge from the second wave of black metal, In The Nightside Eclipse seems to me to be the one that really set the template that a lot of black metal followed. While it’s inaccessible, it’s not as inaccessible as many of the other early records from the scene, and the extra elements that Emperor played with are ones that many other black metal bands would end up also playing with. As such, if you were to listen to one old black metal record to kind of understand the music, this is probably a great choice.

Tilt, “Dental Wreck”

There are certainly things that can be bad about punk. But there’s a floor on how bad it gets - if you keep things energetic and the songs short, it’s always going to hit at least reasonably well.

They Might Be Giants, “Lost My Mind”

Nanobots had a decent number of these kind of big, dramatic songs from TMBG. It’s a bit of a theatrical album, and a solid one from them.

The Wedding Present, “Nobody’s Twisting Your Arm”

The first Wedding Present album is a perfect gem, full of the best kind of frantic jangle pop. And, of course, David Gedge’s heart breaking about every two minutes.

Emperor, “A Fine Day To Die”

Looks like this is the first time we’ve had Emperor on here, so we get to go over the history of yet another important and deeply shitty bunch of Norwegians. The lineup that produced In The Nightside Eclipse featured Ihsahn and three dudes who wound up in prison, for burglary, arson (of a historic church), and murder respectively. The album reflects a lot of that ugliness, reveling in horrible sounds and dark lyrical themes. But, for all that, it’s maybe the most influential black metal album of all time. Maybe because of all that. Many following bands cribbed their style from this record, with its chilly darkness and bleak relentlessness.