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One of heavy metal's best tricks is the two-mirrors-facing-each-other number it does with the smart/stupid dialectic. Priding itself on technically sophisticated riffing and drum speeds whose mastery requires years of study and practice, metal nonetheless wants to be thought of as the baddest kid on the block, too mean to be reasoned with, too sadistic to worry about how its victims feel. It's hard to seem brutal when you're actually brainy, but Norwegian black metal band Emperor pulls it off seamlessly by borrowing one of punk rock's oldest and best tricks: willful mangling of basic grammatical rules. How can you not be scared by a song called "I Am the Black Wizards"? To confuse singulars and plurals is to invite chaos in. Of course, chaos is exactly the property that Emperor's quasi-symphonic, tempo-shifting brand of metal needs to push it over the top, and its song titles, combined with the singer's unabashed arena-rock between-song patter, are the key element in making Emperial Live Ceremony not just a good live album but a completely essential document. More Stravinsky than Sabbath, its guitars run through blinding patterns of 128th notes in exclusively minor scales while the singer alternates between Satan-lives-in-my-throat screams and falsetto-baritone singing. Keyboards that evoke swirling fog and bone-white moons swell and subside throughout, while the drums are frankly stunning in their tireless virtuosity. Songs like "Curse You All Men" or the above-mentioned "I Am the Black Wizards" sketch dystopian Tolkienesque worlds where evil magicians in dark mountain cabins sit by low crackling fires as they hatch plots to destroy the world; "I want you to really bang your heads for this one!" hollers the vocalist before the song begins its neck-breaking sprint toward the the mouth of Hell. Playing for keeps, Emperor jam together so tightly that you'd think there was something at stake besides rocking the London Astoria one night in 1999. Awesome.
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