Enslaved: Axioma Ethica Odini

Remember the first time you heard Opeth's Blackwater Park? Can you recall how glorious their mixing of death metal, progressive rock, and folk was to your ears, and how, many years later it still gives you goosepumps every time you listen to it?

What does Enslaved's latest Axioma Ethica Odini have to do with Blackwater Park you might ask? Well, at the surface, nothing really. Norway's Enslaved have steadily been releasing one winner after another for years, debuting back in the early 90's as a pure black metal band, and slowly starting to infiltrate progressive elements into their adventurous extreme music. However, on this latest CD, Enslaved perfectly mesh the savagery with the beauty, the light with the dark, the crushing with the somber, in much the same fashion that Opeth did so successfully on Blackwater Park. This is a profound work, easily one of 2010's best releases, and an album that will be remembered and beloved for years to come.

Just listen to the band destroying the listener with brutal riffs, bombastic drums, monstrous keyboards, and savage vocal growls on the lethal opener "Ethica Odini", yet inject the right amount of melody and clean vocals just to keep things varied. It's a similar format on "Raidho", another raging inferno of a number that again mixes the clean and growled vocals to perfection. Things slow down a bit for the death metal stylings of "Waruun", a track that features some crushing guitar & organ riffs before the pace picks up with symphonic black metal elements and a mixture of clean, growled, and rasped vocals. The instantly catchy "The Beacon" has plenty of hooks housed within the pulverizing black metal framework, and the dark & ominous "Giants" is sure to send chills up and down your spine. There are parts of this song, and others throughout Axioma Ethica Odin, where you can almost envision the talents of Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson being involved somehow. That Porcupine Tree/Pink Floyd influence just seems to be there in the background, giving many of the songs here a similar quality that can be compared to when Wilson worked with Opeth years ago. Again, another slight comparison to Blackwater Park.

Three seven minute plus epics finish out the CD, but it's the moody "Night Sight" that really impresses the most, a dark & somber metallic prog rock track featuring lilting guitar chords, creepy vocals, and a heaping amount of keyboards. The complex middle section reminds us all this is metal afterall, but then the gorgeous melodic finale takes you back into dreamy progville once more. Plenty of bombast on the savage symphonic black metal closer "Lightening", with Grutle Kiellson's vocals taking on a ferocious gargle that is some of his best wailing on the album, and no shortage of crushing guitar & organ riffs to drive the point home.

Axioma Ethica Odini is epic all the way through, a classic recording from Enslaved that will someday be looked at as the crown jewel in a discography already filled with remarkable albums that are deemed today as classics of the genre. If you want to hear how lethal black metal and atmospheric & melodic progressive rock can live together, then you NEED to hear this album, plain and simple. Highest Recommendations!

Track Listing

1. 'Ethica Odini'
2. 'Raidho'
3. 'Waruun'
4. 'The Beacon'
5. 'Axioma'
6. 'Giants'
7. 'Singular'
8. 'Night Sight'
9. 'Lightening'

Added: December 18th 2010
Reviewer: Pete Pardo
Score:
Related Link: Band Website
Hits: 4546
Language: english

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