With 'Blodhemn', Enslaved dropped almost all of their long atmospheric parts (those weirder ones, if you get what I mean) and concentrated on violence. The band's individuality depends for a great deal on those ancient soundscapes, but still this is nothing else, but Enslaved and their mixture of viking metal, black metal and prog rock influences. And with this, thrash metal.

Intro is fine and weird space-keys stuff, but it ends fast and 'I lenker til Ragnarok' is like a Big Bang. Even though songs are much shorter than they usually were on previous records, Enslaved still take surprising turns every now and then. And while the atmospheric parts are shortened, feelings these songs give are hatred, death, violence and such. I mean; still atmospheric, but in a different way. Some songs are definitely quite straight, whereas some leans towards more epic. Closer includes folky parts, and is easily the oddity of the record. Musically, this is not best from the band, but still enjoyable.

Soundwise, this is more produced when compared to the band's earlier releases. However, this is recognizable as Enslaved. Multiple layers of trebly guitars playing a lot of non-metal style are backed by loud rhythm section pounding like thunder. Everything echoes, but in vein I can stand, just and just, because it adds epic feel. Some songs have spacey keyboards, Hawkwind-esque stuff and personally I wouldn't mind if there were more of them. Guitar solos are great, more usual rock and metal stuff. They fit in well, among all weirdness, bringing in some melody. Vocals are mostly sizzling growl and sometimes there's clean choirs which I don't like very much (sound a bit powerless, even though add certain folk feel). Music does follow lyrics well; when lyrics are mocking, so is music, when lyrics are angry, so is music etc. The songs are sung mostly in Norwegian and 'Urtical Gods' in English. All but 'Suttung's mjød' are translated into English, which is nice.

Rating: 7 (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
07/04/2003 10:10