Enslaved - Eld (Black Metal)

I'll get right to the point: a pretty decent chunk of Enslaved's third album Eld literally sounds like modern mainstream rock music, not too far removed from what you might hear the radio, save for a somewhat lengthy running times on some tracks (on the order of six to eight minutes, mostly, with a sixteen minutes opener). It reminds of the kind of thing that got played on MTV about two decades ago, even down to the vocals. Each time I hear Enslaved's music, I keep thinking: Alice in Chains with folky acoustic guitars (and for no obvious reason, a lot of harsh vocals), though someone who's more familiar with that style of poser rock could probably name better comparisons.

Sure, there are also a lot of "black metal" parts, along the lines of bands like Satyricon or Ulver, but those bands are heavily influenced by mainstream rock music themselves, and said black metal parts make up a minority of the album anyway. Eld is black metal-influenced rock music, not the other way around.

It's baffling to me that somehow we've gotten to the point that a band like Enslaved can be marketed as daring, original or progressive, or some sort of creative vanguard in the black metal scene. If not for the rather spare black metal elements and the fact that Enslaved is signed to a label attached to the "metal scene", most people would just ignore it as they ignore Cradle of Filth, Ulver, Dimmu Borgir and the rest of the "blackened" mallcore crowd.

But lo and behold, a few minutes of screaming and distorted tremolo guitars and suddenly what would otherwise be ignored as alternative rock magically turns into unique avant-garde progressive black metal that only very "open-minded" people, like fans of Opeth (lol), could ever appreciate.

Of course, drawing in influences from rock and other mainstream music is a common trait of pretentious metal bands. It makes their music more palatable to the casual non-metal listener, and plays up an association to "respectable" music that will appeal to listeners embarrassed or offended by metal's overtly aggressive image and Euro-centric lineage. Artistic conceits to extreme metal are thus relegated to lyrics, imagery or lengthy track running times rather than disturbing the perfect blandness of the stadium rock abortion that is Enslaved's music.

You might say that it's an attempt to civilise black metal, to make it more like what you hear on the radio in order to bring it to a wider audience. But in practice, such a mentality only serves to eliminates anything remotely unique, challenging or interesting about metal, and replace it with the same sort of music that you could find anywhere else - the sort of music that black metal originally rebelled against.

There's nothing new about any of that, but with an album like Eld, Enslaved are really raising - or lowering - the bar for how tame and pedestrian "black metal" can be. How can anyone call this "progressive black metal" with a straight face? Real progressive metal would be something like The Epilogue to Sanity, something that explores the deeper confines of the genre, and challenges the listener at every turn. Enslaved has none of that.

Here's the sad truth of this album: the only reason this band is in the underground isn't because they're "too extreme" for radio airtime, or because they're going over people's heads or anything like that. They are underground out of fatalistic resignation, because if given the chance to be the new Nirvana, Enslaved would jump on the occasion.

Fact is, you can walk into your local record store or Walmart and conveniently pick up an album not entirely unlike this one, featuring better instrumentation and better production, with less "problematic" Euro-centric lyrics, released about ten to twenty years earlier. That won't make you feel unique and special for supporting an obscure and misunderstood avant-garde band, but I imagine the music would be a lot better than that of Enslaved.

Back to the band Enslaved.