Asgeir Mickelson is a big name; he co-founded Spiral Architect, he’s played live with Testament, he’s been involved with Vintersong and has been a member of Borknagar. This is a track record approaching that of Shane Embury, and a testament to this is that he’s convinced Ihsahn, the ex-frontman of Emperor, to play keyboards for his new extreme metal venture, ‘God of Atheists’.
Yesterday’s announcement puts Ihsahn in a line up with vocalist ICS Vortex (Borknagar, ex-Dimmu), drummer Trym Torson (Zyklon, Emperor, ex-Enslaved) and guitarist Carl August Tidemann (Arcturus). Mickelson states that Ihsahn’s “contribution adds a new dimension to the music without making God of Atheists symphonic extreme metal.”
The debut album has a tentative release date of Summer 2013, if he [Asgeir] gets “a decent deal”. It probably won’t be any earlier, as the as of yet unnamed bassist will not be recording until Christmas and Tidemann’s solos won’t be recorded until January.
Some provisional song titles include “The Sapient’s Error”, “Fountain of Emptiness”, “Cataclysm” and “I am God”, and the vocals will be “about 40% clean and 60% grim.” This all sounds fairly meat and potatoes black metal, but Asgeir has promised that “God of Atheists is no commercial shit”. If he’s wrong, the album could fall into the ever growing cesspool of mediocre black metal. But if he’s right… this could be exactly what the genre’s been looking for.
Picture credit: God of Atheists
