Pic courtesy of: Ivar Bjørnson "The new album is by far the most solid album we have done. It is built from both the roots of Enslaved; the extreme and dark, as well as the newer-era fluctuations; it is both atmospheric and epic as well as dark and mysterious"

Hey man how are you? How’s the weather in Norway this time a year, I ask because all we have over here are two stations, rainy and non rainy!
Ivar: Hey man! Everything is good here - the weather is actually nice here in Bergen today - it rains most of the time, but we are lucky to have all kinds of weather all the time. Never a dull moment.

You guys recently played at Roadburn 2008 festival, headlining it! How was it? How did the crowd reacted when they knew that Celtic Frost would not be playing and you guys will be stepping up?
How long was your set?
Ivar: It was an amazing experience for us. The crowd, the whole Roadburn community reacted extremely positive to us stepping in for Celtic Frost. Of course some of the audience was a bit unused to some of our higher tempos and more extreme passages, but the response was overwhelming - I think the festival management knew that Enslaved would fit right in with such a musically and artistically focused audience. No bad reactions to us replacing Celtic Frost, only good ones; which is one of the biggest compliments Enslaved could get. We played for something like 80 minutes!

To many European metal bands, playing in Russia seems to be a big deal… why is that? Is Russia still a sort of isolated place for metal, even after the fall of the Soviet Union?
Grutle: I think many bands, us included, has always wanted to play in Russia. When we finally did it in March this year, it was just as amazing that we thought it would be!! Very good crowd! The reason why we have never done it before, is not because we never wanted to, but the lack of serious offers. We can´t just go anywhere and play, you know..he,he. It is a bit more complicated than that. We need visas to enter Russia, we need serious promotors (the biggest problem in most countries…), we need money for travelling over there and to pay our crew etc. Enough said, we are more than willing to come back to play in that country!!

According to your website, Enslaved is working on the new record to be released in October ’08, is that date still standing for your next work to be released? Are you going to use the same label as Ruun? What can you tell us about the album… you know to get the fans excited about the new work!
Ivar: The album looks like it will be out in September 2008 already! It is already recorded and mixed, and we are mastering it towards the end of May. About the label situation we are going to wait a few more weeks before commenting more on that, thanks for your patience! The new album is by far the most solid album we have done. It is built from both the roots of Enslaved; the extreme and dark, as well as the newer-era fluctuations; it is both atmospheric and epic as well as dark and mysterious. We know people are going to like it - both those who know their Enslaved history, be it old, new or all; as well as people that will discover Enslaved through the album.

Enslaved has been catalog as Viking/black metal, others call you, progressive black, and some use the term pagan metal… if we put all of this categories together do you think we can come up with a decent description of the type of music Enslaved performs? If not what type of music do you perform?
Ivar: We prefer to keep it simple and call ourself Extreme Metal. Of course the terms "Pagan", "Mysticism", "Northern" etc is relevant when you enter into a deeper discussion about concepts, lyrics, philosophy and so on, but we feel comfortable with Extreme Metal. Back in the days, in 1992-93, we might have used terms like "Viking", "Battle" and "Pagan"-metal; as means to distinguish ourselves from the Black (read: Satanic) bands in the scene, but this was before the whole Viking/ Pagan thing became a scene of its own. When it did, the terms lost meaning to us and we abandoned them like a nomad would leave last year's grounds.

Did Enslaved ever wore corpse paint? I ask because it seems like that old black metal warriors eventually drop the corpse paint. Do you think corpse paint is an important part of the development of black metal music especially in Norway?
Ivar: No, we never did as a band. We might have used some paint recreationally back to satisy personal curiosity, but not as Enslaved. I played a gig with Taake as session guitarist a couple of years ago - used corpsepaint there because the band does; can't say it brought a lot extra to the table for me. I think the corpse paint was important in the first formative years for the Norwegian Black/ Extreme Metal scene, it was an important part of the identity and the atmosphere, one could almost think that the visual package the corpse paint fronted influenced the music and visa versa. Then I think it all became more fashion and "sexy"-oriented; I think the corpse paint lost its musical meaning at that point, so I have the uttermost understanding and respect for those who left the paint behind, yet it is great that some tough nails clung on to it. Whatever, haha.

Your latest album “Ruun” was released back in 2006, certainly a memory now that you are working on a new album… what can you say you learned from Ruun that you are trying to improve or avoid in this upcoming release?
Grutle: “Ruun” was a huge step forward for us when it comes to both arrangements and production. On “Ruun” we had about 95% of the arrangements ready before entering the studios. That gave us a lot more room to focus on the sound-landscape, and that I think improved hugely on “Ruun”. On the new record we´ve tried to work the same way, just even better! I hope you´ll enjoy it! It turned out fantastic! It was later mixed by Joe Barresi (Tool, Kyuss, Queens of…etc) in StudioStudio here in Norway. We´re really happy with his work!

	Pic courtesy of: www.twilight13media.com "We are not that concerned about what people call us or what other bands do for that matter. We are focusing on constant development. The goal is to be able to make the next live performance the best ever, the next record the best ever…and so on… As long as the creative force is present we will continue to do so"

To end with the “tour/album” questions… let me see if I get this, you guys have been promoting “Ruun” this past year and doing more shows this year while you have been writing the new record. You must just work on Enslaved or you still have “day jobs”?
Grutle: You´re right, we have played a lot of gigs promoting “Ruun” since it was released in may 2006. In beetween, we´ve spend some time writing new amterial, but yes, we´ve been pretty busy! We all stil have jobs besides playing in Enslaved, at least part time jobs. Most of the work is releated to music production. I wish I could earn enough money by playing in Enslaved, but that is very hard nowadays. The main problem is decreasing record sales caused by illegal dowloading. The bands are suffering hard from that.

There is a constant character on the Enslaved videos (at least the ones I've seen: Isa, Essence and Path to Vanir) a white, bold man appears in all the videos, who is he? What does he represents for the videos?
Ivar: This is a an actor and musician from Bergen called Isak. He was part of "Isa" and "Path to Vanir" and a smaller part of the "Essence" music video. He is not a character in any of the stories, just an actor with a very strong character - both in his appearance and in terms of his work ethics - he is one of the most hard working people we have worked with. Yet now he has really done his part in the Enslaved video history, I don't think we will be seeing him in Enslaved videos again..

Beneath the “devilish” vocal work from Grutle resides in some segments very beautiful passages of melodies, this “sound” have been improving and evolving I think since ELD… I think it has evolved so much that if you just used clean vocals like in “Path To Vanir” you will no longer have a black metal element on your music. If this “pattern” of development continues… do you see a future for Enslaved reducing the use of black vocals and enhancing the clean vocal side?
Ivar: First; thanks! We have never been real Black Metal - so we couldn't care less if people think we lost or gained any "realness" or whatever. About the vocals, that is a musical question, not an ideological one. If the music demands more of either one, it will happen. But as Grutle is one of the best "black style" vocalists I can't see a reason for giving that up.. Unless he wants to, but I don't think that's gonna happen. I see a bright future for Enslaved, but it would be stupid to try and predict how it is going to be - we are always surprised ourselves..

There are some black metal critics that hate the prog, clean vocals and the keyboards on bands like Enslaved; do you think when you were young, starting up in the black metal world, were you this close minded? Did you use to criticize other bands for departing for what was consider to be “true”?
Ivar: Yeah, sure we used to have opinions about what bands were "real" in the sense that they backed their words and atttitudes with a genuine philosophy and more importantly; artistical talent. Then again we had a right to have an opinion on the development of the scene as we were doing our part in building it. We spent our time and energy on trying to invent and build a Black/ Extreme Metal scene from scratch so that these kids could have something to complain about on forums in the 2000s, hehe. We were all about trying to develop as a band; we had some alternative influences back then already - a lot people don't know how artistically open-minded the so-called "Inner Circle" of early 90s-Norwegian Black Metal were.. People were listening to 70s prog, electronical music, contemporary stuff and all kinds of "abominations" while inventing the "Norwegian sound". These new Black Metal professors should turn off the computers, go outside and suffer in the world instead of building their imaginary thrones and power structures on their forums. Then again let's hope they don't, so they remain confined to their own binary kingdoms.

There are some comparisons out there placing Enslaved together with Borknagar as true progressive black metal bands. Do you think, do you see Enslaved as been one of the leading BM bands that are elevating the interpretation of Norwegian BM around the world?
Grutle: “true progressive black metal”?? That´s new! Never, ever heard that before! Is that really a term?
But, seriously. As Ivar mentioned earlier, we are not that concerned about what people call us or what other bands do for that matter. We are focusing on constant development. The goal is to be able to make the next live performance the best ever, the next record the best ever…and so on… As long as the creative force is present we will continue to do so, totally without dependence on others. Maybe we are a true Norwegian Indie metal band? Now, that´s a bad one…

		Pic courtesy of: Enslaved "A lot people don't know how artistically open-minded the so-called "Inner Circle" of early 90s-Norwegian Black Metal were.. People were listening to 70s prog, electronical music, contemporary stuff and all kinds of "abominations" while inventing the "Norwegian sound"

Of all your albums, according to my interpretation off course, the one that stroke me the most as been a prog record was “Below The Lights”, certainly Ruun and Isa have some of those elements but “Below…” was just so different than anything you ever did, a song like “Queen Of Night” is so different. Which album do you see as the one that clearly help define the actual identity of the music of Enslaved?
Grutle: “Below the lights” was different from the previous ones, yes definitely! After some years of experimenting with both the line-up and the music, we pretty much started from scratch again and tightened up those loose ends, so to speak. We had departed with Roy Kronheim on guitar and Dirge Rep on drums was about to leave us too. That made “Below the lights” pretty much an old school Enslaved two piece album, with mainly me and Ivar doing all the production. I think that worked absolutely great, and I´m still very found of that album. You mention “Queen of Night” as a different song, and I can agree on that one! That is the only Enslaved song including (meat)flute. A crazy idea I got instantly when I heard the opening riff for the first time!

Do you guys by any change follow up on new metal bands coming out, I ask because most metal musicians seem to live with “the glories of the past” you know, just listening to their old Slayer, Celtic Frost albums and claiming that there is no good metal out there when they don’t even purchase new cds. Do you still from time to time buy a record from a new metal act, or just albums from before 1995?
Ivar: I guess we have both categories in the band - myself I like to pay attention to what is going on in the scene. These days I am paying more attention to the mutations, the whole concept of traditional Black Metal seems to have stagnated quite a bit these days; new releases in this genre seems to be more about artsy types sharing their interpretations of early Burzum and Dark Throne. Been there, done that, haha. I like some newer atmospheric and experimental metal like Gojira, Meshuggah, Isis but also harder stuff like Keep of Kalessin and so on. I don't care if it is old or new, it needs to be atmospheric and be energic.

What’s an interesting fact about Enslaved that most people don’t know, or don’t really want to know hahaha?
Grutle: I am the heir of Tsar Nikolai….or maybe not. Cato´s personal best on Poen is 1960 gr., Ivar is the Olympic champion in p-fencing from Montréal 1976, Herbrand is from Nesbyen and holds with LSK (har`u traktor og ljå…) and Ice Dale is korked.

Have you guys ever played in Latin America? We’ll love to have you around here, for some reason … and this is just me trying to be a sociologist, for some reason most metalheads over here are infatuated with, Viking folk metal, maybe it has something to do with our own aborigine bacground, but who knows we could just be a bunch of posers hahahhaha.
Grutle: “aborigine bacground”! You´re full of suprises, I see! To be honest with you, That native Australian thing is stricktly overrated..he,he. We´ve been to Mexico, back in 95. That was a cool, but crazy experience. We traveled around in a van for 14 days on an exremely low budget tour. Still, we had a great time and a cool experience! The fans down there is absolutely amazing. I would love to play gigs further south to, and I´m sure it will happen some day!

Well man thank you for your time, I hope I found a couple of questions that you haven’t been asked before (that’s why it’s such a short interview I supposed, they have asked you guys pretty much EVERYTHING) If you have anything else to add please do so!
Grutle: Thanks to you too, a pleasure. As I mentiond, we would love to play Latin-America again some day!! Keep it real and stay Metal! Ugh!