Nice gif
and sorry about the delay with this update. It's been a busy week.
YggdrasillUnhappy with the sound of the Nema Promo, the band went back to work rehearsing and then hit the road for some shows. It was during one of these shows that all the pieces would start to fall into place for the band. On a fateful night on April 13th, 1992, Enslaved would play a gig with another upcoming new band, Emperor (as it would happen this was Emperor’s first gig), and another band called Infinite Decay (they disbanded shortly after this gig and was reformed into Limbonic Art). This gig opened up a bunch of new doors for Enslaved, as we will talk about in more detail in future updates.
[Band photos of Emperor, circa 1992]
As another side note, the band Emperor was a catalyst for numerous other big name bands starting in Norway. Terje Vik Schei, better known as Tchort, played bass for Emperor for a short while in the early years. Prior to that he had formed a little band called Green Carnation, which he disbanded a couple years before joining Emperor. He left Emperor in ‘94 because he was imprisoned for 2 years. Shortly after he was released from prison he decided to reform Green Carnation. And of course there’s Ihsahn who just about everyone around here should know from his solo career and ties to Leprous.
Just a couple months after the gig with Emperor, Enslaved went back into the studio, on June 28th and 29th, to record another demo, this one called Yggdrasill. As it turned out, the band had a hard time finding a studio that could do a proper recording of extreme metal. They eventually found a studio called Micro Music on the island of Karmøy that would record their demo. The band was able to scrape together the $330 usd that would be needed to pay for the studio time and mixing. The band recorded all the music together in about 45 minutes in the studio, then recorded the keyboards over the top of that, then vocals last. The funny thing about the recording process was they realized during the first day they only had enough money to do the vocals and mixing of 1 song. They had to come back the next day after borrowing more money from their parents to finish the demo. (there’s actually a little more to this story which I will follow up on in the next update). The production on this one turned out much better. It’s still somewhat lo-fi, but a clear improvement, with the exception of the drums maybe being a bit too muffled. At any rate, this album was both recorded and mixed on those 2 days in June. Yes, this one was actually mixed, which is probably why it sounds so much better than Nema. This time the demo clocks in at more than double the length of Nema, at 34 minutes and change. There are 6 tracks here including a short interlude and an instrumental outro. Although on some versions, the interlude is left out. There are also some re-issues of the demo that include an additional bonus track called Enslaved.
[L-R: Original Cassette demo, Limited Edition LP re-issue, CD re-issue]
Tracklist:1. Heimdallr
2. Allfáðr Oðinn
3. Intermezzo
4. Hal Valr
5. Niunda Heim
6. The Winter Kingdom Opus I: Resound of Gjallarhorn
Bonus track: Enslaved
Musically and lyrically, this is where Enslaved really started separating themselves from the rest of the second wave of Black Metal. Unlike their contemporaries, they decided to pay homage to their native lands history, by writing songs about Norway’s past, Norse mythology, and their Viking heritage. They also started writing much longer songs, as seen by the 4 main songs being 6-8 minutes long. The actual music still leans pretty heavily on the more aggressive and fast paced Black Metal that was common at the time, but it is atmosphere provided by the keyboards and the drawn out repeated riffs that gave this demo a life of its own and started gaining the attention of some of the bigger acts at the time (Mayhem, Bathory, Darkthrone, etc) and one person in particular that was at the center of the whole Norwegian Black Metal movement. We’ll talk more about this in the following update.
Some additional band photos from around this time.
Coming up next: The band receives an offer they can't refuse
Topic: Enslaved Discography and Listening Party: Vikingligr veldi (Read 4937 times)
