Name :   MKContributor

Date :  2012-06-08 18:57

Hits :  1128

Castanets on the new ENSLAVED album?  REALLY?  When it comes to this Norwegian progressive/psychedelic black metal band from Bergen, anything is possible.  

 

Norwegian press outlet Lydverket paid an exclusive studio visit to ENSLAVED’s Men In Black (and hats!) - bassist/frontman Grutle Kjellson and guitarist Ivar Bjørnson - before the mixing phase began on the as-yet-untitled album, due out later this year.

 

Lydverke: It’s time to ask about musical direction this time around. ENSLAVED have in recent years become less and less extreme, but then again more exploratory.

 

Bjørnson: We’ve given more space to it all this time around.  More space to the melodic stuff, more space to the prog flavor and ’70s-inspiration, there are glimpses of some doom, some good Voïvod-style thrash, some cool guitar solos. All the little things that we like we have provided even more room for.  It’s the “more is more”-philosophy. We’ve given up on the structural stuff once and for all. It’s not for us. So there’s not much verse-chorus-verse on the new record. We have tried a few places, but no one even hears that it is an attempt at a chorus. Haha.

 

Lydverke: Some bands go into the studio and do everything in seven days, and it can sound a little dirty and that’s intended. But you work in a completely different way. Is making a record a kind of jigsaw puzzle for you?

 

Bjørnson: We keep on for months and months and it still sounds like shit. Haha. It’s a little like a puzzle, yeah. It’s a mixture. It’s the strange ENSLAVED-mixture of rock and prog. We started out doing the songs live in the studio, and did all the songs that way.  As such, it’s maybe a bit less perfectionist than before.  We left some of the wobbly sounds that occur in the live setting to retain a bit of nerve, but then we have added a lot afterwards, and that is when it becomes a little like a puzzle.

 

Listen to an excerpt from a brand-new song & find out the truth about those castanets here.

 

ENSLAVED are currently putting the finishing touches on the follow-up album to Axioma Ethica Odini, which won the 2010 Spellemann Award (the Norwegian equivalent of a U.S. Grammy Award) in the category “Best Metal Album,” won Terrorizer Magazine’s Reader’s Poll for “Best Album of 2010,” ranked #5 in Decibel Magazine’s “Top 40 Extreme Albums of 2010” list, and appeared on over 65 “Best Albums of 2010” lists in North America, repeatedly ranking in the Top 10.  In Germany, Metal Hammer Magazine awarded ENSLAVED the “Album Of The Year” title and the Dutch magazine Aardschok ranked Axioma Ethica Odini at #9.  

 

Axioma Ethica Odini also debuted in North America at #16 on the Billboard Heatseekers (New Artists) chart, #40 in the Current Hard Music Albums chart, and #72 on the Independent Current Albums chart the week following its September 2010 release.  

 

The Norwegians will be participating in this year’s Barge To Hell cruise from Miami to the Caribbean, beginning on December 3rd.  States the band: “A metal cruise?!?! How nuts is the idea of a metal cruise? Of course we had no doubts; metal is about going nuts, isn't it?”