Album of the Month: Ruun - Enslaved
Enslaved are one of those groups who don't have an overwhelming consensus for their best record. Just about every album from their 1994 debut Vikingligr veldi with its atmospheric take on Norwegian black metal to the complex prog-metal of 2012's RIITIIR could be argued as a contender. This is in part because Enslaved were a group that refused to settle onto a single sound until they had found what works best. With Vikingligr veldi and Frost in 1994 they laid their claim as one of the youngest acts in 2nd Wave Black Metal. But just as that scene began to dry up in 1995-96 they branched their sound, leaning heavily on their Bathory and Viking metal influence for 1997's Eld and '98s Blodhemn. But it wasn't until Mardraum: Beyond the Within in 2000 that their latent prog-metal influences would really coalesce, and Enslaved truly found their home.
Throughout the early 2000s, Enslaved released a bevy of albums: all aggressive, dense, and alternately introspective and martial. However, it's 2006's Ruun that has clicked with me the most. Sitting as the band's last "true" BM album before their decidedly more melodic and potently prog Vertebrae in 2008, Ruun has a much more colossal, all-consuming, and dark feeling. Even compared with it's predecessors in 2003's Below the Lights and 2004's Isa, Ruun has this almost ominous, dangerous feeling. The album saw a return to some of Enslaved's more atmospheric roots with thickly layered tremolo riffs and a denser more claustrophobic production. This is immediately identifiable on the opener "Entroper", with its deeply buried vocals, discordant riffs, and absolutely smothering outro.
Ruun is a very vocally dominated album, few sections are left entirely without them. They serve to churn alongside the staggering riffs on "Tides of Chaos", to backdrop the thunderous double-kicks on "Path to Vanir", and to emotively dominate "Entroper". Both the biting, ragged harsh vocals as well as the sorrowful cleans of the album work to amplify the weight of Enslaved's music. The band makes use of something that far too few bands are willing (or capable of): they know that allowing their music to span a wide spectrum of volumes, aggression, and tempo only causes the extremes to become more pronounced. The best example of this is on "Essence", a song that breaks between anthemic almost-choruses and blitzing verses, bridges, and instrumental sections. This is also seen on the title track, which develops melody and highly memorable parts through crushing drums and stuttering riffs.
On the topic of "Essence", I'll also highlight another of the album's biggest strengths: its breathtaking drum work. Cato Bekkevold breathes life into the album with stunning double-kick grooves, blistering blast-beats, and some of the best drum mixing I've ever heard. The sharp yet flat tone of his snare, with heaps of attack but little "sustain" allows his complex parts of the air to stand apart. This alongside his ever-evolving parts, which manage to keep up with every twist and turn through the songs as on "Ruun" and "Api-vat" give the drums a very central role in the album's overall atmosphere.