VERTEBRAE

Enslaved

Tech/Extreme Prog Metal

4.07 | 157 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Return to the old form from the 2004 "Isa" and more ambitious structures. It makes a more lasting impression on me than "Ruun" and even "Axioma Ethica Odini".

The album starts with an immediate progressive highlight "Clouds". It has dynamic rhythm changes, powerful riffs and as one of few cases, quote prominent keyboards (Hammond, synths). This is a blackened progressive metal at its best. "Ground" has modern lyrical singing as well as relentness uncompromising growling with heavy riffing. The slow guitar solo complements the song well. Another memorable piece.

Alternative metal without black/death metal conventions? Listen to the title track. This is a display of modern metal, agile, mood-changing with no typical verse-chorus structure.

"New Dawn" is another chameleon - starting with angry black-metal rasp vocals to be continued with the same aggressive rhythm but unfitting clean vocals. Growling has very good power and intensity including echo. Progressive rock is represented by Hammond + clean-vocals and Opethesque tonality.

The biggest highlight for me is however "Reflection" with the rising melody and incredible drumming textures that matches the vocals so well. You can hear the absolutely evil riff in the main chorus helped significantly with agressive harsh vocals. On the other hand, the track has commercial potential due to its melody, accessible riffing in some passages. If you don't have enough, listen to Hammond or mellotron enriched riffing later on. I think that this is one of masterpieces by Enslaved in general.

"The watcher" may sound like a straightforward and simplied blackened Enslaved by if you listen to the chords and vocal melody, you'll spot the hit potential augmented by its 4-minute length.

Excellent album for any metal fan and recommended for any progressive open mind.

sgtpepper | 4/5 | 2020-8-19

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