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Baker's Dozen

About The Heart: Greg Fox Of Guardian Alien's Favourite Albums
Tristan Bath , June 22nd, 2016 07:53

Before he takes part in no fewer than three performances at Roskilde festival next week, the Guardian Alien drummer, Liturgy man and prolific collaborator guides Tristan Bath through his top 13 records

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Emperor – In The Nightside Eclipse
Do you feel like the fact that [Emperor's drummer] Faust is a murderer has any effect on this album?

It can be tough with black metal. I definitely draw the line at Burzum. It's a tough call. I feel like message in music is important, but I don't like this album for any message. I just think it's really cool symphonic black metal. I almost don't even give a shit about Faust. He can do all that stuff on the drums, but so can a lot of drummers. There's recordings of Emperor playing all that stuff live with a different drummer and it sounds even better, you know?

Back when my friends were getting into black metal, I kind of hated it. I didn't think it was cool, I didn't like the way it sounded, I didn't think that blast beats were that cool, there was something dragging about it that I didn't get. Faust killed a dude he perceived to be trying to come on to him, right? It's obviously completely fucked. With Burzum it was like, "This guy's a Nazi", and I was done with that. Church burning I don't personally have quite such a problem with. The reason that I picked this record, though, is for the songs on it. 'Inno A Satana', 'Cosmic Keys To My Creations & Times', 'I Am The Black Wizards', I really like those songs! I go back to it a lot. I don't have much to say about it, I just love this record. The orchestration, the arrangement, the shredding – it scratches an itch.