In the Nightside Eclipse

The album was recorded in July 1993. Pytten co-produced it; he had also worked on Mayhem's De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas and Burzum's debut, and on records by Immortal and Enslaved. Drummer Faust has credited him with a good deal of how this album sounds. Most of the music was written and rehearsed before the band went into the studio. The orchestral keyboard parts are the exception: the band had no permanent keyboard player at the time, so those sections were built during the sessions. Ihsahn was seventeen, too young to join the older members at the rock pubs of Bergen after each day's work, and spent that time in the studio learning recording technique from Pytten. The tapes were finished in 1993 but not mixed until the following year, because Faust and Samoth had been arrested and jailed; in the end only Ihsahn and Samoth were present for the mix. Every element of black metal is here — fast tremolo picking, tearing screams, raw production — with keyboards holding the harmony underneath. That combination is where symphonic black metal begins. The running order here is the original's as printed.