Enslaved "In Times (Russia, Soyuz Music, NB 3467-2/27361 34672)"

In Times is the thirteenth studio album by Norwegian extreme metal band Enslaved. It was released on 6 March 2015 in Europe, 9 March 2015 in the UK and 10 March 2015 in the US by Nuclear Blast. As the title suggests, the album's central theme is that of time, considered philosophically, historically, and mythologically. The album sold about 2,950 copies in its first week of release in the United States, making In Times their highest sales debut to date. The album charted in some territories in its first week of release, including Norway and Finland. It is also the band's last album with keyboardist/vocalist Herbrand Larsen, who departed the following year.

In Times marks a further move to a more progressive sound following similar trends on their last few albums. Some reviewers see Herbrand Larsen as responsible for this change, with Exclaim! stating that "the secret star of the record may be keyboardist Herbrand Larsen, whose role in the band has expanded markedly over the past few albums and really comes to the fore on In Times". Loudwire agree, writing in their review that "with each passing album, keyboardist Herbrand Larsen has become a more integral part of the band utilizing his soothing clean vocals to contrast and compliment Grutle’s uncompromising rasp". Ivar Bjørnson of the band told Blabbermouth in an interview that In Times "is the most consistent body of work we have so far: it incorporates our 'blacker' past with our influences from prog rock, our present sense of absolute freedom, and the joy of being in this band".

According to Bjørnson, the title "reflects the existence of multiple realities across ‘places’ and times; both physically and metaphorically. Every bit of thought or reflection involves a variety of times, unconsciously – the past, the present, the future, mythological times, deep time, psychological timelines and so on. So this album is a meditation on the concept of being aware and working with times actively to achieve new situations according to the will. The title makes me think of life, death, runes, esoteric traditions/magic, mythology, gods, quantum physics… everything and nothing and everything". In a separate interview, he said that "it is about “times" and existing in and across several times, the same way you have in mythological or a mystical perspective of time, creation and the forthcoming, the end of the world. It was interesting enough that we have philosophies and science, not like in mythology, (in this) everything is certain. It was Christianity (and other religions) that first introduced the concept of the world ending, with no more beginnings after that. So that's one perspective."

The album was recorded in Bergen, Norway, and was mixed in Sweden by Jens Bogren at his Fascination Street Studios. The first track to be written for the album was 'Thurisaz Dreaming', following their Australian tour, and according to Bjørnson set the tone for the rest of the album. An article in Terrorizer explains that "some of the album’s weirder textures and sounds were conducted deep in the woods of Valevåg, south of Bergen, in a mobile studio adding that "you can definitely hear the earthy, organic feel this has given the album". Kjellson has said that the band wished to capture a more "organic" sound in the recording of this album, and that "We decided we wanted to have a more live music approach. We decided to record the drums, bass and rhythm guitars live in the studio. I think we were onto something then so we decided to go for that this time as well and this time we decided to rehearse a lot more prior to recording so, it was pretty flawless this time. We were careful so we had a good time, the three of us recording the main themes, bass guitars and drums."

The liner notes for the album include a note that reads "All Hello Kitty-ride playing dedicated to Fenriz". This is in reference to a comment Fenriz made in regard to a ride cymbal pattern often used by Enslaved.

In Times received mostly positive reviews from music critics. On the Metacritic website, which aggregates reviews from critics and assigns a normalised rating out of 100, the album received a score of 78 based on 4 reviews. The German variant of Metal Hammer named In Times as album of the month in its March 2015 issue. Writing for Pitchfork, Andy O'Connor review argued that "there isn't a whole lot differentiating one song from another, and many [songs] feel longer than they are", and states that the album is "competent musically but too timid to go into the depths, emotional, musical or otherwise, that black metal should strive for." Loudwire's Joe DiVita states that "the ever-consistent Enslaved have churned out another album to cement their legendary status in a style they continue to call their own". Thom Jurek's review for AllMusic described the album as "a continuum of the sonic approach they began exploring on 2001's Monumension, mixing black metal with "progressive elements, sonic ambiences, and even psychedelic explorations", and summarises the review by calling the album "vital, bracing music". In her review for Exclaim!, Natalie Zina Walschots states that "Enslaved have hit a sweet spot with In Times, experimenting just enough to keep everything interesting while also offering up pure aggressive pleasure so decadent it seems almost indulgent".

Track listing

All lyrics are written by K Grutle and Ivar Bjørnson; all music is composed by Ivar Bjørnson.

1. "Thurisaz Dreaming" Bjørnson 8:13
2. "Building with Fire" Grutle 8:49
3. "One Thousand Years of Rain" Grutle 8:13
4. "Nauthir Bleeding" Grutle/Bjørnson 8:10
5. "In Times" Bjørnson 10:44
6. "Daylight" Grutle/Bjørnson 8:56

Total length: 53:05

Licensed to Soyuz Music.

For sale in Russia and CIS countries only.

Additional experimentation and sonic exploration appearing on this album was conducted deep in the woods of Valevåg south of Bergen where a mobile studio recorded additional sounds.

Recording information:

Recorded at Duper & Solslottet Studios Earshot & Conclave Studios Peersonal Sound in Bergen and Tveita Lydkokeri, Valevåg, Norway September 2014.

Mixed [...] Mastered at Fascination Street Studios, Örebro, Sweden October 2014.

Imagined and written from November 2013 to October 2014.

Enslaved "E (Japan, Chaos Reigns, GQCS-90434)"

E is the fourteenth studio album by Norwegian extreme metal band Enslaved. It was released on October 13, 2017 by Nuclear Blast.

This is the first album recorded without longtime keyboardist and vocalist Herbrand Larsen since 2004, who left the band in late 2016 and was replaced by Håkon Vinje in 2017. This would also be the last album with Cato Bekkevold on drums before he quit in 2018.

It was given Norway's 2017 Spellemann Award for best metal album of the year.

The title of the album represents the initial letter of the band name but written with the runic character ehwaz (similar to 'M') on a minimalist and dark wooden cover art, created by designer and painter Truls Espedal. The concept of the symbol (which means 'horse'), is treated in a certain way in "Sacred Horse".

Enslaved songwriter and guitarist Ivar Bjørnson said:

[...] They (the Vikings) used an alphabet, the runes, twenty-four different symbols that were used both for writing, normal stuff like'this guy owns this few cows' and stuff, and then it was also used for esoteric works, or magic, as it were, in popular history. I guess behind each of those runes there was a meaning, and this particular one means ‘horse’, in mythology the most famous horse is Sleipnir, Odin’s own horse, the one with the eight legs. So, of course, it has a deeper meaning, like person and horse, it symbolises the whole concept of relationships and positive dependency. [...]

The album maintains a musical style quite similar to its predecessor In Times (2015), although perhaps a little more melodic and atmospheric, following the base of progressive metal traditional.

The lyrical themes revolve around Norse mythology, vikings, and especially, around nature and ancient Nordic spirituality.

Bjørnson explains:

Everything we do and create are imitations of nature; as we evolved from nature, that is how it must be — yet modern man thinks he and she is independent of nature, that we somehow are so superior that we do not have to take nature into consideration other than as a backdrop for shitty movies. Or festivals. Losing touch with nature is basically to lose touch with being human

E was composed and written from April 2016 to March 2017. Subsequently, Iver Sandøy was hired again as the record producer.

It was recorded at Duper & Solslottet Studios, Conclave & Earshot, Peersonal Sound in Bergen between April – May 2017 and was mixed and mastered by Jens Bogren at Fascination Street Studios in Örebro, Sweden in June 2017.

As usual in all Enslaved albums, E was once again written by the duo composer of guitarist Ivar Bjørnson (credited with his real name Ivar Peersen) and singer and bassist Grutle Kjellson, and also marks the introduction of their new keyboard master and clean vocalist Håkon Vinje of Seven Impale, a close collaborator of Bjørnson and Einar Selvik in their parallel musical project, called Skuggsjá.

The special edition of the album includes two bonus tracks (something unusual in Enslaved studio albums) recorded simultaneously but with no relation to the style of the rest: a black-doom song composed in Norwegian titled "Djupet" and a cover of the 2005 Röyksopp hit "What Else Is There?", performed mostly by Vinje.

Enslaved made music videos for the singles "Storm Son" and "The River's Mouth", both directed by Josh Graham, who previously worked with Soundgarden and Neurosis among others.

Tracklist:

1. Storm Son 10:54  
2. The River's Mouth 05:12
3. Sacred Horse 08:12   
4. Axis of the Worlds 07:49   
5. Feathers of Eolh 08:06   
6. Hiindsiight 09:32   
7. Djupet 07:39  
8. What Else Is There? (Röyksopp cover) 04:44  
9. Jizzlobber (Faith No More cover) 06:12

Time:  01:08:20  

"This album is dedicated to the memory of our friend Dany "Bidi" von Drongelen (1969-2017), turn on, turn in, drop out!"

The title of the album represents the initial letter of the band name but written with the runic character ehwaz (similar to 'M').

Official videos:

- Storm Son

- The River's Mouth

Recording information:

Imagined and written from April 2016 to March 2017.

Mixed and mastered at Fascination Street Studios in Örebro, Sweden, in June 2017.

Recorded at Duper & Solslottet Studios, Conclave & Earshot, Peersonal Sound in Bergen, Norway, and Overlook Hotel, Auklandshamn, Norway, from April to May 2017.

Enslaved "RIITIIR (CD+DVD, Limited Edition Digipak, Germany, Nuclear Blast, NB 2932-0/27361 29320)"

RIITIIR, occasionally typeset as "RIITIIЯ," is the twelfth studio album by Norwegian extreme metal band Enslaved. It was released on September 28, 2012 in Europe and on October 9, 2012 in North America. The name RIITIIR is Ivar Bjørnson's "Norse-ified" take on the words "Rites/Rituals", or "The Rites of Man", and rituals form the central concept of the album. The album received positive reviews from music critics, and sold around 2,300 copies in its first week of release in the United States, which made it their highest debuting album to date in terms of sales.

BBC Music described the album as "a complex, schizophrenic work, verging on the overly sensorial at points, leaving the listener feeling as if they’ve been repeatedly bashed over the head with a really clever hammer. It’s marked by sudden shifts in tempo and disposition, propelled by unhinged rhythms: check the title track’s arabesque, Melechesh-like pummel." They also noted that keyboardist Herbrand Larsen's clean vocals "dominate" the album, "imbuing its eight tracks with a sheen of accessibility that may test the tolerance of some."

Lyrically, the songs all draw to some extent on the theme of rituals, which the album title refers to. Some of the songs take a historical perspective on pre-monotheistic religions around the world and their purpose. The opening song 'Thoughts Like Hammers' takes a philosophical perspective on the role of ritual and philosophy as an "engine for change". Others deal with the inner state and psychological side of rituals. Bjørnson has said that "We have all these different angles that are looking at that, because it is evidently quite important. It holds the key to other things. We’re not concluding, we’re more asking, I guess, and exploring through our asking, is the ritual seeking to cause physical change in the world, to alter reality, or is it actually more trying to change the perception?"

According to Kjellson, the artwork "deals with certain forces that all human beings share and/or have in common. More relevant in ancient times than in modern times, we’ve moved away from human instincts to a certain extent. We have looked at all the mythology, the Indian, Egyptian and Norse. You can find loads of the same ways of looking at life, approaching life, and taking the first steps so to speak. We shared more or less the same philosophy, the same approach to life. Didn’t matter where it came from, didn’t matter who you talk to. There’s a lot of common deities, the basics of the first primal steps, the first primal rituals of man, of civilizations. And these civilizations didn’t have any contact at all, it’s very interesting how humans come to think the same way, we share some instincts."

RIITIIR received mostly positive reviews from music critics. Exclaim!'s Natalie Zina Walschots praised the album, describing it as "vast and breathtaking" and "simply stellar". Walschots wrote that "The spiralling, tentacle-like guitar structures are as muscular as there are strange, probing and exploring. The drumming creates a vastness, a sense of space that sounds capable of containing galaxies, but then a startlingly bare acoustic guitar passage, like the one at the end of "Death in the Eyes of Dawn," suddenly becomes intimate and lonely. Grutle Kjellson's trademark harsh vocals find a counterpoint in Herbrand Larson's melodic clean singing, and the two styles often duel one another, caught in each other's inexorable orbit." Pitchfork's Grayson Currin was more critical of the album, describing it as "a restless and sometimes laborious album that attempts to spotlight all of Enslaved's parts in one very overbearing package. For 67 minutes, one shift only gives way to another surprise, enabling an album that's busy enough to be called boring." He did however note that this "doesn't mean that these 67 minutes are without their rewards. Enslaved are still very good at generating ideas, if not sequencing or filtering them on RIITIIR. The ferocious blast that begins "Thoughts Like Hammers", for instance, is rapturous. Several of Larsen's sections are sharp enough to be called catchy, too; indeed, throughout RIITIIR, many of the less claustrophobic moments offer a balmy respite in the midst of the spastic, ceaseless changes."

Tracklist:

Disc 1 (CD)

1. Thoughts like Hammers 09:30
2. Death in the Eyes of Dawn 08:17
3. Veilburner 06:46  
4. Roots of the Mountain 09:17   
5. Riitiir 05:26
6. Materal 07:48  
7. Storm of Memories 08:58
8. Forsaken 11:15  

Time:  01:07:17  

Disc 2 (DVD)

1. Behind the Veil - The Making of RIITIIR: The Band, The Studios, The Artwork 51:10  

Time:  51:10

Limited first pressing, released as a six-panel digipak, including bonus DVD.

Released in Europe on September 28 and in North America on October 9th via Nuclear Blast Records.

According to Ivar Bjørnson, "RIITIIR" (occasionally typeset as "RIITIIЯ") is a "self-made "Norse-ified" version of the words "rites", "rituals". "RIITIIR" = "The Rites of Man", to put it in a formulaic and easy way".

Recording information:

Recorded in Bergen, Norway at Duper Studios, Earshot Studios, Solslottet Studios, and Peersonal Sound during 2011-2012.

Mixed and mastered at Fascination Street Studios, Orebro, Sweden.

Jens Bogren – mixing

Tony Lindgren – mastering

Iver Sandøy – production

Truls Espedal – artwork

Emperor "Wrath Of The Tyrant (Unofficial Release, Wild Rags Records, WWR070)"

Wrath of the Tyrant is the first demo album by Norwegian black metal band Emperor. It was recorded in May 1992 and self-released by the band shortly after.

Wrath of the Tyrant was originally distributed by the band as a demo shortly after it was recorded. This original demotape had a picture of a chimera on the cover. In 1994 it was re-released through Wild Rag Records with two bonus tracks and different artwork. Tchort, who didn't join the band until 1993, is the person who appears on this cover. A limited edition 12" vinyl was released by Head not Found records in 1995; this version featured a photograph of the Scott Monument in Edinburgh as new cover art. In 1998, it was re-mastered and released with the tracks from the Emperor EP. There are two versions of this re-release; the Candlelight Records version has the cover of the Emperor EP and features video footage of live performances from the band, while the Century Black version has a different cover and lacks the video footage.

Most of the songs on Wrath of the Tyrant were later re-recorded by the band. "Wrath of the Tyrant" and "Night of the Graveless Souls" were re-recorded in December 1992 for the Emperor EP. "Ancient Queen", "Witches Sabbath" and "Lord of the Storms" were re-recorded during the same session and released on As the Shadows Rise. "My Empire's Doom" was re-recorded and renamed "Beyond the Great Vast Forest" on the band's debut album, In the Nightside Eclipse. "Moon over Kara-Shehr" was re-recorded with Jan Axel "Hellhammer" Blomberg on drums and released on the compilation Nordic Metal - A Tribute to Euronymous in 1995.

Track listing

All lyrics are written by Mortiis; all music is composed by Samot and Ygg.

1. Introduction 02:20   
2. Ancient Queen 03:17
3. My Empire's Doom 04:34  
4. Forgotten Centuries 02:51  
5. Night of the Graveless Souls 02:56   
6. Moon over Kara-Shehr 04:25
7. Witches Sabbath 05:41  
8. Lord of the Storms 02:10   
9. Wrath of the Tyrant 03:58   
10. Witches Sabbath 05:57   
11. Ancient Queen 03:39  

Time:  41:48  

Songs information:

Tracks 10 and 11 was taken from As the Shadows Rise EP (1994).

Recording information:

Tracks 1-9 was recorded May Anno 1992, into the crypts of Telemark.

Tracks 10 and 11 was recorded at Studio SS under the December full moon Anno 1992.