Peccatum

Peccatum emerged in 1998 as a Norwegian post-black metal endeavor initiated by Ihsahn, the driving force behind Emperor whose full name is Vegard Tveitan, together with his spouse Ihriel of Star of Ash (Heidi Tveitan) and her sibling Lord PZ (Pål Solberg). The three classically trained singers, with Ihsahn also managing nearly every instrument from guitar and bass to keyboards, aimed to transcend black metal’s conventional boundaries by weaving in strands of heavy metal, Gothic rock, industrial, new age, ambient textures, and, above all, classical composition; the outcome was their strikingly unorthodox first album, 1999’s Strangling From Within. That record, however, marked only an initial step, as the group’s experimental impulse expanded into progressively more unexpected territory across the Oh, My Regrets EP of 2000, the full-length Amor Fati in 2001, and especially the 2004 album Lost in Reverie. Notably, the latter effort represented the first material captured once Emperor had disbanded and Lord PZ had stepped away.