Vegard Sverre Tveitan, known as Ihsahn, was born on October 10th, 1975 in Notodden, Norway, where he grew up on a large farm, started piano at six and guitar at ten. He is best known for EMPEROR, the band whose "In the Nightside Eclipse" and "Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk" essentially invented symphonic black metal, and he is rightly credited as a progenitor of the style. He was also a founding member of THOU SHALT SUFFER and half of PECCATUM, the project he ran with his wife Heidi Solberg Tveitan, who records as Starofash. Since 2006 he has worked mainly under his own name, folding classical, industrial and progressive writing into music that long ago stopped being containable by black metal. He cites IRON MAIDEN, KING DIAMOND, JUDAS PRIEST and PINK FLOYD as formative, specifically for how they built albums as narratives.
