Welcome back to our series of posts looking at the musical influences which make bands tick. This time around, we have black metal veterans Imperium Dekadenz. I was especially excited to host this post since Imperium’s type of black metal always seemed to me to draw on various eras, styles, and sounds of the genre. Sure enough, while the list below does feature mainstays of the genre like Satyricon and Darkthrone, it also throws us a couple of curve balls right at the beginning and end of the post.
The last entry was especially delightful to see. Obviously saying that Motörhead are underrated is absurd; they are one of the most famous and celebrated bands of our times. However, I do think that there’s a certain “underselling” of their influence on music; they don’t often get named as one of the bands who formed our genre and changed the generations of musicians after them. But they did. Even though they play supposedly “simple” music, Motörhead energy and approach to music was, and is, unparalleled and it’s hard to overstate how much they have to do with where metal is today.
And so, without further ado, I present to you The Anatomy Of Imperium Dekadenz. Their upcoming album, When We Are Forgotten, is a perfect elaboration on this list, exploring both “new” and “old” styles of black metal, tinged with melodrama, punch, and reverence to equal degrees. The album was released on August 30th via Napalm Records. You can grab it right here.
My Dying Bride – Like Gods of the Sun
We both love Black Metal stuff, but we also love Doom Metal and it turned out early that this album rotated very often in our CD players. The strong doom influence on this album is probably is one of the reasons Imperium Dekadenz has such a strong melancholic note.
Burzum – Hvis lyset tar oss
Before we started a music project together in 2004, we met at concerts and bars. We talked about music we like and the most passionate discussion we had was about this album and the song ‘Det som en gang var’. There is no song that better embodies a dark and fearsome forest than this song. The forests with its secrets and myths of our home ,’The Black Forest’ ,was an important place for us, because we spent a large portion of our childhood there. The atmosphere of Burzum, and this album especially, are responsible for why we decided to make Atmospheric Black Metal.
Satyricon – Nemesis Devina
I bought the music video of ‘Mother North’ on VHS during Wacken Open Air in 2001. I had lent the video cassette to Vespasian. We were extremely enthusiastic about the song as well as the video. When he brought the cassette back to me, he gave me a CD of his solo project. I gave him some of my project. This was not the beginning of Imperium Dekadenz but a strong influence, as many of our tracks have a similar dramaturgy as ‘Mother North’.
Darkthrone – Preparing for War
This is a ‘best of album’ and we listened to it during the Summerbreeze festival in 2004. It was in the morning of the last festival day, we sat in my car, drunk off of cheap beer, and celebrated these songs. In that moment we decided to start a project together and a few weeks later we had our first session in Vespasian’s student flat. Darkthrone reflects the raw and old school side of Imperium Dekadenz.
Motörhead – Ace of Spades
It’s no secret that Vespasian is a huge Motörhead fan. In the early years of Imperium Dekadenz, we were students and we had a wild time in Constance at Lake Constance. Motörhead was the alpha and the omega of each escalating party, especially the song “We Are the Road Crew”. It was the most important time when everything started with the band and our friendship became stronger. There was always a rock n’ roll element in our music but it’s even stronger on our latest album. ‘When We are Forgotten’, ‘Transcendence’ and ‘Frozen in Time’ are good examples for that.