ENSLAVED — The Sleeping Gods (review)

ENSLAVED — The Sleeping Gods album cover EP · 2011 · Progressive Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
Phonebook Eater
7/10

"The Sleeping Gods" is another example of how thought-provoking and pondering Enslaved are.

Not being familiar with the band Enslaved, I took my chances back in 2010 and listened to “Axioma Ethica Odini”, which ended up being one of my favorite albums of that year, and of progressive black metal in general. “The Sleeping Gods”, released the following year, did not to my surprise receive great ratings. This half hour long EP has great moments that make it a very enjoyable listen, and certainly is an underrated one.

Enslaved with this EP goes on a more experimental direction compared to “Axioma Ethica Odini”, experimenting with some interesting sounds, a bit of Folk, Ambient, and what not. The musicianship as usual is really good, the production even better, actually sounding quite ambitious and expensive for a Metal album. The vocals, however, are something that disappointed me a little bit, not really the shrieks, as they are always good when Grutle Kjellson does them, but the clean vocals, which sounded a bit generic and a little lost in the mix as well, and overall didn’t do much for me. But the experimentation, which surprised me, is what I really dug: fascinating, atmospheric keyboards, interesting song structures, progressive influences. All these elements are the ones I wish Enslaved would develop even more on their next LP’s.

Standout tracks include the opener “Heimvegen”, pretty straight-forward but very memorable, and because of that perhaps some fans might have been turned off by it, “Synthesis”, a very Ambient driven song, while “Nordlys” is more towards an Avant-Garde approach, and the title track a more Folk influenced song.

A widely eclectic, but very memorable EP, another of the many good examples of how Enslaved is a pondering and thought-provoking band, that will hopefully release even more grandiose efforts in the near future.
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