Page 20 - Metal Hammer Issue 334 - UK (May 2020)

Ivar Bjørnson: enjoying
WORDS: RICH HOBSON
ENSLAVED’S OUTPUT THIS past
decade may have skewed towards
proggy, almost post-metal flavoured
grandeur, but that doesn’t mean they’ve
lost any of their bite. So when founder
Ivar Bjørnson tells you their newest
record is taking a more direct approach,
you know it’s time to batten down the
hatches and prepare for an extreme
metal assault unlike any other…
Hey! How are things in the studio?
“We’re done! The album’s mastered and
on its way to Nuclear Blast. It’s mind-
boggling that we’re on our 15th album;
E was the end of the mid-era Enslaved
line-up and now we have revitalised
ourselves and the writing/rehearsal
process has been amazing. After 29
years it’s cool to still be able to say we’ve
done something we haven’t before.”
Fascination Street
Judging from your Instagram post,
things were looking suitably frosty for
the recording of the album?
“Yeah, I’ll definitely remember this as
our dark, frosty and misty record! We
generally record in winter, but this year
has stood out so much it influenced the
album. Fascination Street [Studios] is in
the forest, so I got up at 6 each day to
drive to the studio in the dark. I’d sit in
the studio all day, eat, then
come home in the dark too.
These past few weeks made
me realise I hadn’t seen the
sun in a while… but it kind of
works for the album!”
At this point it feels like
Enslaved records can go
pretty much anywhere…
“That feeling of absolute
freedom is our only
20 METALHAMMER.COM
guideline. You could say that every
period of Enslaved has inspired this
new record. It’s still a bit too fresh to
fully appreciate right now, so we’ll
leave it to you people in the sunlight to
make your judgements.”
THE FACTS What’s the anvil picture you posted
ALBUM: all about?
15 “It started out with Iver [Sandøy] and
STUDIO: I working on his drums – he’d hit this
Duper & Solslottet small bell he has built into the kit that
Studios, Bergen. is like a miniature anvil. We just
couldn’t get enough of these sounds, to
Studios,
Stockholm the point where we ended up deciding
to get an actual anvil. One of Grutle’s
PRODUCER:
Self-produced, [Kjellson, frontman] few neighbours
mixed by has an anvil collection, so one of the
Jens Bogren evenings we went over to see this really
EXPECT: nice gentleman whose basement was
A frosty heart filled with anvils… and Enslaved
of black metal merchandise! We tested some out and
dwelling within found the perfect one to use on one of
a colossus of prog our most powerful songs.”
metal grandeur
What themes have inspired
this new record?
“This record is a journey
through darkness, but there
is a surprising amount of
light in there too. It’s about
paradoxes and balance –
how each side needs to find
balance with its opposite
in order to exist. It’s
a celebration of all those
his return to the light
things that grow and bubble under
the surface, both psychologically
and philosophically.”
Iver has worked as producer on some
of your past records. Was it strange
for him to go from producing to
playing as part of the band?
“I think there’s a few times that – and
I don’t know if the saying works as
well in English – he met himself in
a doorway. It’s where you make rules
or expectations, but then don’t apply
them to yourself, like a parent telling
their child not to smoke then getting
caught themselves. He would push our
previous drummer in the studio, but
now he’s realising that sometimes he
was being a bit too harsh and it’s not as
easy as it first appeared!”
These days it feels like Nordic culture
is a lot more recognisable in the
mainstream. How do you feel
Enslaved fit in with that?
“The age of information is also an age
of disillusionment; what you see around
the world is an anger and bitterness
that drives a lot of people out, so people
find solace in simple, older things like
family, home and of course in Skaldic
tradition. Some bands aim to take
something old and do something new
with it; we feel our mission is to take
contemporary sounds and convey
something old with it.”
ENSLAVED’S NEW ALBUM,
UTGARD, WILL BE OUT ON
MAY 22 VIA NUCLEAR BLAST PRESS