Progressive Black Metal Band Enslaved Debut Stream Of New Album 'IN TIMES'

Anyone who knows of Enslaved will have clicked on this already; for the rest of you, imagine if Pink Floyd and 70s Genesis cut a record with Emperor.

For those of you who don't know what any of that means, it means it's extremely good.

Progressive black metal stalwarts Enslaved have debuted the stream for their new album In Times. It turns out we were right; not a single track is under the 8-minute mark, with one of the tracks stretching over 10. This is good news for those of you who might not have been exactly thrilled by the singles.

The songs stretch and grow and evolve over their course, and each song has a much more natural close than the admittedly somewhat awkward endings for the single edits.

And, as hoped, the lyrics are much less obtrusively silly in the context of the full album, acting more to support the musical structures and motifs of the song and album as a whole rather than being the central focus.

On the whole, the record sticks pretty closely to what Enslaved do best. There are cosmically-inclined psychedelic portions hugely indebted to Pink Floyd, some more melodically-inclined sections that don't feel too far from power metal, mid-paced progressive sections that wouldn't sound entirely out of place on a Radiohead or Steven Wilson album, and, of course, searingly-intense black metal. Like most Enslaved records, expect this one to take a little bit to fully parse.

It might feel a bit like Enslaved-by-numbers at some points, but hell, that's still light years beyond what most bands are doing. It's an oddly empowering and optimistic take on black metal.

It's not really a debate that we're better for having them around doing what they do. Expect a more thorough review soon.

If you can't look at that album art and feel the music swelling in you and around you and feel yourself soberly hallucinating disintegrating timeless shadow figures in a 4D murky ocean outside of the bounds of our universe, I'm not sure there's much hope.

In Times comes out March 10 through Nuclear Blast; you can preorder the album here. Enslaved is going on a North American tour starting March 5 with YOB and Ecstatic Vision as support; get dates here.

Image taken from Enslaved's Facebook page.