Although I am of the somewhat contentious opinion that all covers bands should be shot, the odd cover song by an original band can be more than welcome and tribute albums like this can be very good if treated with respect and reverence (sorry about that one). Yes this album title speaks for itself and obviously all of you reading this know the subject matter and probably each and every song featured on it well. Here we have 16 different acts each covering a different Emperor song in their own way, we go from the dawn of the band up to IX Equilibrium (nobody has a stab at Prometheus era) and nothing is repeated. There are acts included that you will surely have heard of and others that may well be new to you.

There are two things to consider when tackling an Emperor Song, namely the music and the vocals. The music side of things here is dealt with very professionally on the whole. Take for example a band like Crionics who tackle ‘The Loss And Curse Of Reverence’ with the grit and determination that only a Polish band could do, replicating things musically with steadfast poise and precision. They manage to capture the fantastic majesty of one of Emperor’s finest moments (IMHO) and nail it note for note in such a fashion that even if the vocals are not quite as ferocious and up in the mix as they could be you can completely overlook this. The vocals, are the other dimension, after all who can match Ihsahn at full sweeping croon? The unheard of (to me) Ancestral Volkhves from Serbia really should be applauded here for not only adding violins to ‘With Strength I Burn’ but also melodic twin vocal harmonies and spoken passages in their own language. It’s an odd approach to a well known song but really it works and is probably as far as I am concerned the real must hear track of the compilation.

Quite a lot of the bands play it straight without diverting from the well trodden Empirical path. Others cannot help adding their own style to things. Amongst these we have Necrodeath from Italy, blackly thrashing up ‘Lord Of The Storms’ with Flegias heavily rasping vocal delivery and the somewhat organic slapping drum approach giving things a completely different feel. Another one that I found rather odd was Mesmerized (I am assuming the Polish band) whose singer seems to have got lost on the way to a Cannibal Corpse tribute album on ‘Empty,’ another interesting twist.

The old guard who you would expect to be featured stand up and are counted. Horna naturally coat their track in a coat of foul grime making ‘Wrath Of The Tyrant’ suitably feral and aged. Helheim’s ‘Witches Sabbath’ is bloodthirsty and nicely polished sound wise but best of them all are the ever reliable Taake whose ‘I Am The Black Wizards’ simply slays and will hopefully stop any fledging BM band bashing out covers of this on stage forever more. Happily I discovered some more bands here that warrant further exploration. Silva Nigra from the Czech Republic have somehow escaped me despite having five full lengths behind them. Their rendition of ‘Moon Over Kara Shehr’ really goes for it and captures the multi-layered sound of Emperor with finesse. Saltus (Pol) go for ‘Curse You All Men’ which really had to be included and get those tricky nuances and gruff vocals honed neatly and Karpathia from Slovakia hit the buzz laden fuzz treble attack of ‘Ancient Queen’ head on.

The 80 odd minute compilation has no duff songs, it obviously has some that are not going to live up to the original but what do you expect? This may not be the only tribute album to Emperor that you are going to find but it is definitely one of the most varied and enjoyable ones I have stumbled across and whilst you are (surely) never going to witness these songs from the masters themselves again (yeah I know, said that before), you should really consider checking this out

(7.5/10 Pete Woods)