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27 MIN READ TIME

INTRO

ENSLAVED’S HEAVY NEW CONCEPT ALBUM

IF IT’S OUT THERE, IT’S IN HERE

Birthday boys: Enslaved mark 30 years in the game with album 16, Heimdal.
PRESS/ROY BJØRGE

The Norwegian quintet have been pushing prog metal forward for over three decades. On their 16th album, Heimdal, they’re getting conceptual and looking back to their teenage idols for inspiration.

Barely a year after the release of their Caravans To The Outer Worlds EP, Norwegian progressive metallers Enslaved have announced their next long-player: Heimdal will be released on February 17 through Nuclear Blast. The seven-song collection is a concept album inspired by and named after the Norse god that guards the mythical Bifröst bridge. It’s also intended to belatedly celebrate the 30th anniversary of Enslaved’s formation, in 1991.

“We couldn’t do much last year in terms of fooling around with birthday cakes and eating them off each other’s faces,” Enslaved’s guitarist, co-founder and songwriter Ivar Bjørnson jokes, “so it seemed like a good idea to just make an album instead.”

Enslaved started up in Haugesund, and over the last four decades and 15 albums they’ve dabbled in post-rock, psychedelic, folk, pop and krautrock. According to Bjørnson himself, Heimdal is an equal mix of their experimentation and melodies as well as their trademark heaviness.

“We have some stuff that takes the melodic side of Enslaved very far,” he explains, “and some songs that are, arrangement-wise, very exciting. They’ll be rewarding for those who are fans of our progressive side. We also have some really heavy things, taking us further into that territory than ever before. I think it bridges a lot of years of our catalogue.”

When the band started, core duo Bjørnson and his fellow constant member, bassist/ vocalist Grutle Kjellson were teenagers. They gathered momentum within the Norwegian black metal movement, despite never wanting or claiming to be a part of the genre. Their 1994 full-length debut Vikingligr Veldi mixed growls and distorted riffs with expansive songwriting and Tangerine Dream-inspired synths, and there began their increasingly eclectic career.

Bjørnson began composing material for Heimdal in 2021. He started almost immediately after Enslaved finished recording the heavymetal-meets-space-rock Caravans To The Outer World, which dropped that October. Ultimately, the guitarist says the writing process lasted for six to nine months, and influence came from what he was listening to towards the tail end of the pandemic, namely his favourite music during his teenage years.

“Someofthe arrangements willberewarding forfansofour progressiveside.”

“I have 10 to 15 absolute favourite artists,” Bjørnson says, “about three to five per genre – and I found myself going back to them, listening to the things we were listening to when we started. We had a collection of vinyl records that we’d play every weekend and not change very often. We never got bored of them. It felt good to go back and take inspiration from them.”

Bjørnson also reveals that Heimdal marks a return to Enslaved’s penchant for writing longer songs, in contrast to the band’s previous, more episodic album, 2020’s Utgard. As of Prog going to press, two singles have already been released: Kingdom and Caravans To The Outer Worlds, the latter lifted from the 2021 EP of the same name. Bjørnson explains: “There was just something about [that song]. When we were writing for Heimdal, it kept knocking on the door and saying, ‘Do you want me to join in for the album too?’ That EP had these intermissions and strange song structures that, I think, opened up more doors for us.”

Heimdal was recorded in the same way as Utgard, and with the same line-up: Bjørnson, Kjellson, guitarist Arve Isdal, keyboardist/ vocalist Håkon Vinje and drummer/vocalist Iver Sandøy. Enslaved self-produced the record once again, and used their own personal studios to track, predominantly Sandøy’s Duper Studios in Bergen, where the band are based.

Although no live dates had been announced as Prog went to press, Enslaved do plan to tour extensively in support of Heimdal.

For upcoming show announcements, and for more on the band and Heimdal, go to their website, www.enslaved.no.

PETER GABRIEL TO TOUR IN 2023!

The star will play the UK and Europe for the first time since 2014.

This month, Intro was compiled by

Jerry Ewing Cheri Faulkner Rhodri Marsden Matt Mills Grant Moon Natasha Scharf Francesca Tyer Phil Weller

Peter Gabriel: i/o, i/o, it’s off on tour he goes…
PRESS/YORK TILLYER

Peter Gabriel will tour the UK and Europe next year. The prog god’s 2023 outing, i/o The Tour, will mark his first shows in his home country and the continent since his two-year Back To Front Tour, which ran from 2012 and concluded in Dublin in December 2014.

The 22-date tour will open on May 18 at the Tauron Arena in Krakow, Poland, with dates following in Italy, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland. The run is currently set to close with four UK shows in June: Birmingham’s Utilita Arena (17), The 02 in London (19), Glasgow’s OVO Hydro (22), Manchester’s AO Arena (23). The final date will be, once again, in Dublin, at the 3Arena on June 25.

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