- Country: Norway
- Style: Progressive black metal
- Label: Nuclear Blast
- Release date: 2 October 2020
Fifteen albums in, Enslaved are still finding new corners to explore. Utgard is short by their standards, nine songs in about forty-five minutes, and it moves with surprising speed between black metal fury, krautrock pulse and big, clean-sung choruses.
It is also the first Enslaved album with Iver Sandøy behind the kit, and his drumming, plus his vocals alongside keyboardist Håkon Vinje, gives the record a fresh lift. “Fires In The Dark” opens on a slow, chanting build before the riffs crash in. “Jettegryta” is raw and gnarly, “Homebound” is pure classic-rock swagger, and “Urjotun” runs on a cold, motorik synth groove that sounds like nothing else in their catalogue.
Some fans will miss the longer, more sprawling epics. But “Distant Seasons” closes things on a warm, melancholic note, and the whole album feels like a band enjoying themselves.
Best tracks:
Fires In The Dark
Homebound
Urjotun
Distant Seasons
Author’s rating: 8.7/10
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