Short Reviews [Ihsahn - 2023 - "Fascination Street Sessions"]

It must be said that this is a somewhat unusual EP, not so much in the output, but in the reason for doing it in the first place. Ihsahn joined forces with URM Academy's online educational program for music production, and producer/engineer Jens Bogren (Opeth, Dimmu Borgir, Arch Enemy, Powerwolf) of Fascination Street Studios to create some course content. Ihsahn wrote some demos, and then the whole process of taking those and turning them into a finished product was videoed, with additional commentary then added to that to describe what was taking place and why. Ihsahn was joined by his long-time drummer Tobias Ornes Andersen and keyboardist Oystein Aadland, who also provides lead vocals on one song, while Jonas Renske of Katatonia recorded guest vocals to ‘Dom Andra’, a cover of a track by Swedish band Kent. I am sure this is going to be a fascinating addition to the course, and a valuable teaching aid, but this is very middle of the road and even the multi-faceted opener which combines commercial rock with some black metal elements does nothing to really make it special. It is highly polished, and Ihsahn’s guitarwork is of course wonderful, but I do wish there had been more of it. I was a huge fan of his last album, ‘Amr’, but this not so much as there is just too much mainstream here for me. Perhaps his recent tour with Emperor will get the musical juices running, but this is not something I will be rushing to listen to again.