Enslaved – Vertebrae
Nuclear Blast Records
(3.5/5)
Norway’s own Extreme metal band Enslaved is still alive and kickin’ in 2008 and they have released another album! The new album is entitled Vertebrae and it definitely proves why this 17 year old band is still around. Although Ivar Bjørnson and Grutle Kjellson have both grown up quite a bit since they formed Enslaved back in 1991, they are still hangin’ in there and are still making Metal the Norwegian way. Even though I’m not a huge Extreme metal fan and this is the first Enslaved album I’ve heard, I definitely have to say I like it. The biggest downfall for me is the growled vocals, but apparently someone likes them since the band is still around, so I can’t argue too much with the results. I don’t really hate the growling here, they’re just not my favorite growled vocals. Getting past that, I do really like the clean sung vocals and the music quality is definitely worth listening to, so the pros outweigh the cons here. When looking into the technical aspects of the album, it’s hard to really pinpoint any tracks that stand out over the others, but the lyrical quality is certainly worth mentioning. Some of the lyrics obviously have deeper meanings while some are “surface level” lyrics that have a bit of a fantasy style to them. The combination of lyric styles is really interesting and adds that much more to the overall quality of the album. All in all, I would recommend this album to any Metal fans out there looking for more good music coming from Norway in the Extreme metal genre.
