It’s often bothered me that at it's time of release this album came and went with barely anyone even speaking a single word about it. ‘Somnium’ was a one off project from Ihsahn (Emperor, Peccatum, etc.) that original began back in the early 90’s when the death metal incarnation of this band broke up and Emperor was formed in 1991. Ihsahn has been working sporadically on this album since 1991 and after nine years he created and absolute masterpiece of neo classical keyboard compositions.
A lot of people have been quick to compare this work to the intro’s and outro’s found on Emperor’s releases, which is true since they sound similar, but frankly to me they sound further refined. What really impresses me the most about this work is that all of these compositions actually sound like a real orchestra rather than cheap synthesized sounds or plain old ambient music as I’ve seen some people quickly label this release as such. A composer such as Ihsahn has an exceptional gift to craft very illustrative compositions that easily invoke images and tells stories without really even saying a single word. The feeling the album has is a bit hard to describe though. It’s got of course a very strong classical feeling to it that brings to mind some of the great composers from centuries ago, but it also has this strong dreamy almost romantic like feeling to it. Every time I listen to this recording I can picture Ihsahn playing in a large Cathedral with the music echoing throughout the structure and faintly pouring out into the village square for all to hear.
The music is mostly very bombastic and swiftly paced, with only a small amount of time in each song for softer moments. He also tends to experiment a little with track four, which starts out sounding very power electronics like for the opening minute, but then turns into a really beautiful piano composition afterwards. Track two is very apocalyptic sounding at first but then becomes much more calm and then bombastic within time and it’s also the only song to feature Ihsahn’s voice, which is both his falsetto voice and some grimmer black metal vocals. Track seven is another very bombastic song featuring Ihriel’s (Ihsahn’s wife) ghostly soprano voice in the middle of the chaos. Somnium also at times tends to remind me of the ‘Castlevania Symphony of the Night’ soundtrack, which if you haven’t heard is definitely not one to be overlooked.
All things considered this is pretty much a perfect package from start to finish and just once again proves what a genius Ihsahn is for writing music.
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