Iconic black metal act Emperor will reunite for a headline show at next year’s Wacken Open Air Festival in Germany.

The news was announced today at this years festival, at which vocalist Vegard Sverre ‘Ihsahn’ Tveitan and guitarist Tomas ‘Samoth’ Haugen were present. Their appearance next year will mark the festivals 25 year anniversary.

After a four-album career that marked them out as one of extreme metals most influential acts, Emperor retired in 2001 with the swansong album, ‘Prometheus – The Discipline of Fire and Demise’, and have only re-united briefly in 2006 and 2007 for one-off gigs. Discussing the future of Emperor in an interview with Gun Shy Assassin, Ihsahn stated that he would ‘never say never’ to future performances, but that there would be no new music from the band:

‘Part of the reason why our albums keep on selling is probably because we were always an uncompromising band, and that is a tradition I would like to uphold. If we did a new EMPEROR album, what kind of EMPEROR album would people like? I say listen to the stuff I do, and the stuff that Samoth does, and you can more or less figure out what a new EMPEROR record would sound like, and that sounds nothing like old EMPEROR. Trying to duplicate something from the past would just turn everything into a parody.’

Since the dissolution of Emperor, the members have channelled their energy into other projects, with Ihsahn pursuing a solo career, Samoth turning to death metal with the band Zyklon, and former bassist Mortiis achieving a successful career in dark ambient music.

Emperor’s career has, like many of their contemporaries from the early 90’s Norwegian black metal scene, been marked by controversy stemming from a number of violent incidents. 1994 saw two of the bands three members incarcerated – former drummer Bard Faust was convicted of the 1992 homophobic murder of Lillehammer man Magne Andreasson, while Samoth was implicated and imprisoned for his involvement, along with contemporaries Varg Vikernes and Euronymous, in the infamous church burnings that plagued Norway throughout the early part of the decade.