TWELVE YEARS OF UNWANTED OPINION
I enjoyed this mid 90s effort from ENT but couldn’t shake that disappointed feeling that every song sounds the same, which makes the album kinda nondescript in some ways. But then, it took me a minute to realise, half of these fucking songs appeared on Holocaust In Your Head. No wonder I thought them familiar! They have been updated and given a polished metallic sound here, for some reason.
Frost has always been the Enslaved album that I keep coming back to. Having listened to it back to back with Vikingligr Veldi for the purposes of this review, I am surprised by how fast this record is in comparison to the former. Considering they are both released in the same year, there is a surprising difference between them. Whereas Vikingligr… had its own mid-pace, unique viking-meets-black metal vibe, Frost has a much more tried-and-true blackened approach. Unique, mystical synths aside, Frost enters the territory of frantic, melodic blastbeat passages, nothing that’s a million miles away from what Dissection would do later on, or what Trym would do with his time in Emperor. Frost also has one of the greatest cover photos of all time, IMO.
Stunning, hypnotic, trance-inducing riffery is the order of the day, on this early release from long-running proggy madmen Enslaved. I’ve never been a huge fan of later Enslaved stuff, but then again I’ve never really given it a proper chance. I have however, always had a soft spot for stuff like Frost. It is of no surprise then, that I really enjoyed Vikingligr Veldi. I’m not super fussed on the vocals, which are a bit croaky (fine if you love Inquisition lol), but otherwise this is an amazing debut considering how young everyone is at this point. The keyboards are fantastic. 5 songs in 50 minutes. Epic stuff.
