Style: Black metal, progressive metal
Primary Emotions/Themes: Introspection followed by definitive violence
Thoughts: Enslaved is a band that has never been content with a sound for more than one album. That has never been more true than Mardraum. This album, perhaps more than any of their others shows the band constantly evolving, never stagnant, always searching for perfection.
The first song is a prime example of this, Større enn tid - Tyngre enn natt starts out with highly delayed guitars strumming notes that would not be out of place on a psychedelic rock record. As the song continues to progress it weaves in and out of the psychedelia mixed with unusually heavy riffs for the band. Seriously these border on death metal.
It's not until nearly the 5 minute mark before the vocals come in. By this point the band has explored a variety of musical ideas and sounds. When the vocals finally do grace my ears they are not the harsh screech that I'm used to from Grutle, but rather his proud and majestic clean vocals. This plays over top a full chord riff that has a lonely guitar lead played in the background. It's exceptionally atmospheric and one of my favorite parts of the album.
The first song is only a small snippet of the album as a whole, but it gives the listener a strong indication of what's to come. Ormgard is nearly death metal in it's intensity, matched by a low growl from Grutle. Entrance - Escape sees the band singing in English for one of the first times, and has more of that psychedelia that the opener showed. Stjerneheimen sounds almost like a black metal take on classic rock. The band is all over the place with the record.
It's not that the band is unfocused though, quite the opposite in fact. They know that they want to experiment with all these different sounds, it's like they wanted to throw everything against the wall and see what stuck. Only thing is that everything stuck, it's all good.
Written September 9th 2024
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