This album is one of the greatest achievements ov the heavy metal world. Intro itself is a reminder of medieval times full ov norse magic and Viking times. A must have in cds/tapes/vinyls collection, you cannot live without it. Base ov Viking/Pagan Black Metal!

of of of.. what's the difference? "Eld" is still wonderful album. And will be.. till the end of time.

I guess he is not used to see the word ov, along with kvlt and nekr0, used in a non-sarcastic manner.

Eld is a good album, and I am especially fond of 793 (Slaget om Lindisfarne). I like the laid back style of riffing, with acoustic guitars and clean vocals, much more than the progressive style they would later adopt. I don't know, it just has a charm to it that is not captured in later albums.

Recent albums are still on like 5/6, 6/6 notes. Very good music. But that album is something special. Something you can't forget. Like the gates to the after-death world. One of those.. You know what I mean. Fucking brilliant masterpiece! Intro reminds of Dead Can Dance old good times.. MEDIEVAL MYSTERY OF NORDS.

I like it, myself. It doesn't blow my mind like it does for you but it is a pretty good album. I appreciate the subtle heavy and thrash influences, and the clatter-bonk drum sound rules, even though I'm sure a lot of people hate it.

I find that first track to be too long with some rather uninteresting parts, though.

I'm sure the band is proud of their all albums. "Frost" - another great masterwork. They are bigger star than Metallica in alternative heavy metal world after years for sure. Darkthrone and Emperor lost what they achieved years ago..

Not sure what you mean by that; Darkthrone today is preferrable to Enslaved as far as I am concerned, although I still find the new Enslaved stuff to be interesting.

VIkingligr Veldi is my favourite, by the way. Sublime album.

Darkthrone preferrable?! Last album was totally disgrace! The one before, "Circle the Wagons" - first good one since 2004. Enslaved crushes all new Darkthrone releases! KRIEG!

Eld is fantastic. A wonderful listening experience. I fucking love the drumming; he's the Randy Foxe of black metal!

Thanks!

Drop the attitude, please.

And though I like new Enslaved, some of their stuff is really self indulgent. There's plenty of instances of them dragging out a riff for way too long ("Ethica Odini" being the prime examble). And I for one prefer the simpler material on recent Darkthrone albums.

Really? Whatever. Enslaved is the best. Darkthrone didn't learn the lesson. That's why guitarist started the new project band..

I used to be really into this album as well as the band as a whole quite a bit. Somewhere down the line though, I just completely lost interest. I actually can't remember the last time I've listened to them.

it's an ok album. after listening pretty heavily to enslaved a few years back (first four albums), i can really only stick through the EP and the debut now. mind you, they're also easily two of the best bm recordings ever, so eh. eld is alright but i get bored after the first song, in truth.

Wait, are you taking credit for the album or something? This might be a language barrier, but that response was unexpected and amusing.

Great album I remember when it came out. I had ordered it through a mail order and finally got it, listen too it like five times a day for a month. I had a party and some stupid drunk bitch spilt her beer all over it, I wanted to kill her! LOL! hard to believe that was almost 17 years ago, crazy how time flies.

Decent album but it doesn't grab like Frost and Vikingligr Veldi do. That said, I still prefer their recent prog albums to their early stuff.

Listening to it right now, thanks for the reminder. Great album. The drummer sounds like he should be in a prog metal band. Actually, I think I like Enslaved's prog leanings on this album better than their current direction.

It's decent I guess. The albums suffers from the first song tho, it's too long and not very good either. If it closed the album maybe it would be more rewarding for some.

I'm more much fond of Frost and especially Blodhemn (Eit Auga Til Mimir is their best song ever). The latter stuff is good but not so much in my book. I for instance hate Herbrand's clean vocals and wannabe 70's keyboards. Lacks aggression as well. Essence was their really good track to me.

I always thought that Monumension is their best album. Does anyone share that opinion with me?

The first track is my favourite thing about the entire album. I admit that it's perhaps unnecessarily long, and not every second of it is extremely captivating, but it has some beautiful passages, some of the best Enslaved has ever made.

yeah, I see what you mean, I think it's mostly that really slow part that repeats twice that I can't stand...it seems to drag on forever and has a really unappealing melody compared to much of the rest of what's going on in the piece.

Acrobat, nice comparison with Randy Fox; I never thought of that but I guess I see what you're getting at!

Just after the first blast beat passage? I really like that melody!

Act your age, not your height.

Eld is indeed a fabulous album. I love the production, everything sounds crisp and clear, including the drums.

Yeah, I agree about the uselessness of this part, but the rest of the song is perfect. The clean vocals are among the best within the Viking metal subgenre.

I like Blodhemn too. I stopped following the band after that album.

No one mentioned the Yggdrasill demo, which was really great and epic.

Has anyone heard the Promo '94? I'd like to know if the tracks are the same as in Frost.

Nice to see some praise for Blodhemn. A lot of people don't rate that album at all. I guess it's somewhat unexpected after Eld, which is a fantastic album and not a sign of things to come but I love it. Vicious, majestic, one of Tagtgren's best production jobs, killer solos from Kronheim.
Anyway, Eld rules but it's Mardraum that is the be all and end all for me.

I haven't studied their back catalogue as much as I would like to, but from what I've read I thought Eld was regarded as their worst album? For this reason and the cheesy cover I haven't checked it out but I probably should now

Eld (and all of Enslaved albums up to Monumension) are more "progressive" than anything else the band has done for the last several albums as far as I'm concerned. Isa was probably the last Enslaved album that interested me, before they drifted into shoegaze material.

Great album, and probably my favourite one, just slightly above Frost. On this album they've really found the perfect balance between black metal elements and the "viking" influence that was soon to be lost. On par with other viking metal classics from Norway, Av Norron Aett, Dawn of the Dying Sun, Arntor, Mellom Skogkledde Aaser.

Are you kidding me?

Nope. Why's that?

Because they don't have shoegaze material? Progressive rock sure, but that was mostly prevalent in Vertebrae, which I find to be one of their greatest albums.

How is recent material more "progressive"? all I hear TBH is slower, simpler and more predictable music, with the added touch of clean vocals. As oppose to older material, where each album offered something different, as I think this thread may well illustrate.

I may have used the term "shoegaze" more to provoke a reaction more than anything, but I still think my view in the above paragraph stands. People seem to view only recent Enslaved albums as progressive, I however see them as something of a stagnation compared to the innovation present on earlier material.

I'm not that familiar with Enslaved's discography before Below The Lights, ( listented to a couple of tracks from Frost, wasn't that impressed) so you may be right about them being more experimental earlier in their career. I can't really comment on that. However I was only commenting on you calling present Enslaved shoegaze, which is just silly.

in that case, you may need a lesson in what Enslaved were up to prior to Below the Lights (a good album in its own right).



Enslaved has always been a progressive band, yes, blast beats, tremolo riffs and all.

They have always been a progressive band in the sense of experimentation and differences between albums, but they haven't always been progressive metal/rock genre wise. I think that is where you are making the mistake when talking about how people only view recent Enslaved as progressive. Because only the recent albums are actually mostly progressive metal/rock. Doesn't have anything to do with how intricate the music is.

Good song by the way, but it does't come near post Below The Lights for me.

Since this has turned into general Enslaved discussion I'll throw in my own two cents: Does anyone else feel Ruun was the height of their prog material? You've got that triumphant, inspiring opening track, the smooth Middle-Eastern sounds and tremolo riffing in the title track, that foreboding buildup in Tides of Chaos...The production is nice and crisp without being overly clean (unlike Vertebrae), songs are just the right length, and every song is a strong point, whereas I even found Axioma and Riitiir to lag in a few places. Verterbrae I could never really get into; feels like they went too far off the prog-rock deep end there and every song (save New Dawn, which is awesome) just kind of ambles around.

Well that's where it gets tricky. Because typically when one talks of Progressive Rock, you will be referencing Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, ELP, etc...

Whether rock, metal, whatever, I'd still argue earlier Enslaved albums have more in common with this style of music to a degree. But more to the point, I feel Enslaved were more on a creative roll, right up to somewhere roughly mid point into the 2000's.

EDIT: Post was ninja'd by previous one, but I'd have to disagree, Ruun is about where I started losing interest, albeit having a few decent tracks. That and the fact you refer to it as their prog material, something I've just been arguing against for the last several posts!

Ruun is a good album, but I have always considered it to be "that album between those two better albums". It just feels very safe to me. Like they didn't yet dare to go all out prog rock like they did on Vertebrae. On the other side you have Isa, which is just a little bit rawer than Ruun, has better songwriting, and better pacing. Ruun just isn't all that exciting to listen to, and the songs tend to blend together whenever I listen to it.