Enslaved – Axioma Ethica Odini (2010)

The masters of Progressive/Experimental Black Metal return with a super impressive release that tops anything they have done before this album. With “Axioma Ethica Odini”, Enslaved shows no signs of slowing down, compromising, or playing it safe. The band maintains the high musical standards they set with “Isa”, “Ruun”, and “Vertebrae”, and manage to push things a bit further on this long-awaited release.

It has been years since we liked a Black Metal release as much as “Axioma Ethica Odini”, and through our listening experience of this brilliant album we can’t avoid using comparisons to Borknagar’s “Olden Domain”, Primordial’s “A Journey's End”, and Enslaved’s “Isa” among other is in terms of musicianship and innovation for their time. While there are many Psychedelic, Progressive and Experimental elements in “Axioma Ethica Odini”, the core roots of the album emanate from well made and aggressive Black Metal that is non-compromising and never feels watered down, but rather enriched by these elements.

Kicking things off with “Ethica Odini”, the band will immediately remind you of Primordial’s guitar work, but this will soon be transformed into a more typical Enslaved approach to music, with soaring guitar riffs, harsh and clean vocals paired with psychedelic sounding (a la Borknagar) keyboard arrangements. For an opening song, “Ethica Odini” packs as much punch as you can have in one song and still leaves room for further improvement with the remaining songs of this album.

Most songs follow the brilliant combination of aggressiveness and excellent musicianship presented in “Ethica Odini”. But we also have songs like “Waruun” that follow a different pace, but they are equally effective. Other songs like “Axioma” offer a trippy ambient-like ‘breather’ in the middle of the album, creating a very nice contrast with everything else presented in the album.

For the fans of the more ‘Progressive’ side of Enslaved, we have “Night Sight” a song that might evoke some memories of Yes, and similar bands. However, Enslaved brilliantly adds harsh sections that feel brutal, are perfectly woven into the song’s structure to brilliantly offset the ‘clean sections’. Like you expect the song writing skills presented in “Axioma Ethica Odini” are top notch.

Our favorite song in the album has to be “The Beacon”, this track combines all the aggressiveness, progressive elements, and psychedelic elements we love about the band, with some brilliantly catchy riffs. This creates a very powerful and thick palette of contrasting musical textures that make the song very enjoyable and diverse.

Since the first listen we gave “Axioma Ethica Odini” we know this album was something else. After every subsequent listen to the songs, we keep finding little details that just keep adding to the majesticness of the album. The riffing is top notch, the drumming is brilliantly excecuted, the bass guitar pounds away since minute one but never interferes, they psychedelic and atmospheric keyboards are just magical, and the combination of growls, screams and clean vocals is just perfect. We can’t really ask anything more from a release, but we can recommend you this album with everything we have.

Release: September 28th, 2010

Country: Norway