ENSLAVED: Utgard (PROGRESSIVE METAL,Black Metal): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

"E" embodied another milestone in the shaping of Enslaved's plural identity, but it was also a pivotal album between two renewals of musicians, the arrival of Håkon Vinje on keyboards beforehand and that of drummer Iver Sandøy just afterwards. At the end of this decade, it is with the spirit partly turned towards the origins of the group, with the anniversary of the twenty-five years of "Vikingligr Veldi" and "Frost", that the Scandinavians approached the writing of their fifteenth album.

"Utgard" is a response to those who felt that Enslaved had tended to purr or dilute his purpose in recent years. An album that is both classic of the Norwegians' signature and surprising on certain points, it continues Enslaved's customary renewal process. The fundamentals are there but in a more compact form than usual and with a rhythm that leaves little room for idleness: plunged into the forges of hell at a frantic pace (the polyrhythmic 'Storms of Utgard') with its armada of hypnotic riffs ('Homebound'), progressive 70's breakthroughs ('Jettegryta') and heavier turns with psychedelic or experimental tones (the bubbling instrumental passage of 'Sequence'). Enslaved lulls the whole thing with Nordic mythology (the inaugural pagan celebration of 'Fires In The Dark') and narrative elements ('Utgarđr', 'Flight of Thought and Memory').

When Iver Sandøy took over the drummer's position, he brought his vocals talents to the point where he and Håkon Vinje shared the clear vocals in the band's latest productions. Their contribution is a clear benefit in this field more and more invested by the group. The extent of their contribution is evident in the choruses of 'Flight of Thought and Memory' or 'Fires In The Dark', creating a balanced association with the growls or in a monopoly position in 'Distant Seasons'. They literally carry all the emotional charge of the live 'Homebound' with depths rarely heard among Norwegians.

With Håkon Vinje on the keyboards, "Utgard" also sees its palette of colors enriched in the less heavy passages with an astonishing (and detonating in the general atmosphere) 'Urjotun' totally new in the writing of Enslaved, which falls within the 80's gothic electro-gothic. Another dimension, more dreamlike and this one better matched with the whole album, pulls "Utgard" towards the light. It is expressed in the instrumental breathing spaces and solos of 'Sequence' and 'Flight of Thought and Memory' and more structurally in the magnificent 'Distant Seasons' with its nebulosities close to Devin Townsend which closes the album on a moment of grace and poetry.

With its conciseness and some of the shortest songs ever written by the band, "Utgard" is the result of an obvious desire for efficiency. The album is no less dense, far from it, and ambitious in its propensity to want to reconcile the essence of the band's identity with its innovative desires. The release does not satisfy all the expectations (the narrative aspect a little diluted) and generate frustration (some developments that we would have liked to hear more fleshed out) but it is precisely this polymorphic character, with its strengths and weaknesses, that makes the attraction and magic of "Utgard". - Official website

ENSLAVED

UTGARD

NUCLEAR BLAST

PROGRESSIVE METAL