Heimdal

In true Enslaved fashion, the Bergen voyagers’ 16th album, Heimdal, is both a departure and a communion with roots forged over three decades ago in the turbulent birth throes of Norway’s black metal scene. Founded in 1991 by the then precociously young Ivar Bjørnson and Grutle Kjellson, Enslaved were determined to set out on a different course from their Satanic, church-burning peers, turning their attention towards Viking lore and writing the majority of the lyrics for their 1994 debut album, “Vikingligr Veldi“, in Icelandic for its proximity to Old Norse. If subsequent albums, Frost and Eld – spelling out the dynamic, combinative properties of ice and fire – remain incandescent marker points for Norway’s black metal scene, they were signposts too. Contained within their fevered, sloshing riffs and pomp-infused atmospheres were swells of anticipation and an embryonic sense of destiny. They were tantalising glimpses of the wide-open spaces that have