Arson Cafe: Enslaved - Heimdal Review

Saturday, March 04, 2023

Enslaved - Heimdal Review

The previous decade mostly had me hooked with Enslaved and all of their recent records, maybe except the admittedly quite solid Utgard in 2018, which was received warmly by the fans despite my own final verdict. All of the band’s works have a lot to discover when engaging with them, and while the same goes with the latest offering Heimdal, it is also a quick eye catcher regardless. The familiar blend of black metal, 70’s progressive rock and slight psychedelia, still resonates all across this album, but they gratefully cater heavier and more unconventional (even jazzy) patterns here and there, showing the everlasting calibre of the band.

Grutle’s vocal work is impeccable, with excellent clean voice parts in chorus-like sections or in forms of narration, and powerful screams when the tracks dictate so. The gallery of melodies in Heimdal is vast, taking trips to prog directions through the lens of the band and not the genre, with a rhythmic complexity that is apparent but still easy to comprehend and enjoy as the album unfolds.

Enslaved also employ little recurring elements in the compositions, like the use of synth keys in a few instances especially in “Forest Dweller”, which features keyboards similar to “The Sacred Son” from the album E and texture-like synth sounds similar to “Forsaken” from the album RIITIIR.

The band’s more combative nature lies in parts of “Kingdom”, which also has instant attention grabbing guitar work in the introduction, the wondrous and intriguing highlight “Mongolia” and in “Caravan to the Outer Worlds” and towards the end of “The Eternal Sea”. Heimdal opens with the sound of water flowing, and a deep sounding horn, executed Eilif Gundersen from Wardruna, which ensures everyone of us that these guys are real vikings. Even though that opening track “Behind the Mirror” would be on the less aggressive side of Heimdal, it sets the tone perfectly as a starter and sets the foundation of this wondrous album.

Enslaved still marches forward after thirty years of activity in the scene, with a firm background and interesting innovative touches that would attract metal and non-metal fans alike. Heimdal’s musical quality is indisputable, what’s left is only for the listener to appreciate it.

DAMAGE: 4.75/5 [Brilliant]

Release date: 03 Mar 2023

Release label: Nuclear Blast

Listen: Bandcamp

No comments:

Post a Comment

Reckoning

From all the hills came screams. A piece of sky beside the crescent sun was detaching. It was a loosened circle of evening sky, suddenly lighted from the back. It was an abrupt black body out of nowhere; it was a flat disk; it was almost over the sun. That is when there were screams. At once this disk of sky slid over the sun like a lid. The sky snapped over the sun like a lens cover. The hatch in the brain slammed. Abruptly it was dark night, on the land and in the sky. In the night sky was a tiny ring of light. The hole where the sun belongs is very small. A thin ring of light marked its place. There was no sound. The eyes dried, the arteries drained, the lungs hushed. There was no world. We were the world’s dead people rotating and orbiting around and around, embedded in the planet’s crust, while the earth rolled down. Our minds were light-years distant, forgetful of almost everything.