Sacred Horse

My first runner up as favorite album was the new album by Enslaved, simply named E. Progressive metal seems to be the genre they fall under, but the genre is less important to me than the quality of the music, and to me, it is simply outstanding. I have played the opening track, Storm Son, before, but my favorite track after many a listen is Sacred Horse. New keyboard player Håkon Vinje gets a workout that moves my mind in the direction of the late, great Jon Lord on this track, and it really shows how well he fits in with the rest of the band.

Enslaved is a band that mixes clean vocals (also Vinje's duty now) with the growls of Grutle Kjellson (bass/vocals) - and the growls are very unique. Grutle's style is very harsh and not deep enough to be the more traditional Cookie Monster sound, but on E, they fit better than ever. The only other original member is Ivar Bjørnson (guitar and backing vocals), while lead guitarist Terje "Ice Dale" Isdal has been with them since 2002 and drummer Cato Bekkevold has been with them since 2003. Enslaved of 2017 sounds very different from the band that recorded and released Vikingr Veldi in 1994. I love their evolution. I became aware of them with the album Ruun in 2006, and their ability to add in soundscapes and melody in addition to building and building and building on a riff (as heard on today's song) makes them uncannily heavy hitters. Today's song, Sacred Horse is a tour de force of everything I like about them. Enjoy!

2017 - October 27 - Storm Son

I was really surprised to see that I hadn't included any songs by Enslaved yet on this blog. They are one of my absolute favorite extreme metal bands, although I fail to see how they are all that extreme anymore. They are definitely challenging at times - Grutle Kjellson's growls sound really makes him sound like a corpse whose vocal chords have rotted beyond salvation - but the inclusion of clean singing and atmospherics really has elevated their music far into the progressive realm during this young century.

They started in Haugesund in the year I graduated high school, which was way back in 1991, but are now based in Bergen, Norway. I was not listening to them at the time, as I didn't discover them until right around the release of Vertebrae in 2008 as a result of finding Opeth and exploring the more extreme metal I had dismissed when I was younger (which is kind of the opposite of what most people do - mellowing out with the seems to be the norm). They were started by friends Grutle Kjellson (bass and vocals) and Ivar Bjørnson (guitar), and eventually evolved into a five-piece band before the release of Isa in 2004. Their lineup was stable from 2004-2016, with Cato Bekkevold on drums, Arve "Ice Dale" Isdal on guitars, and Herbrand Larsen on keys, vocals, and guitars, but in 2016 Larsen left and was replaced by eminent Håkon Vinje. They just released their fourteenth studio album, E, two weeks ago today, on Friday the 13th of October, which is only fitting...

They had the best ever response to the debate of music downloads following the Norwegian political party Venstre suggesting that all downloads should be legal for free. The leader of Venstre at the time, Lars Sponheim was a farmer with free-range sheep in the mountains, so they decided that since the sheep was grazing on public land, that was similar enough to music being available online, they could just "download" a sheep. They then took it in to the Norwegian parliament to return it to Sponheim - but he wasn't there... Ironically, he was in the mountains reigning in his sheep when they tried bringing it to him. But the point was pretty darn solid, if you ask me - and a much better approach than Metallica's Napster crusade in terms of getting at the heart of the problem with music downloads.

But - back to the song of the day. The album E is really solid, and the opening track really showcases all sides of Enslaved. Storm Son is well worth a listen...