Revolver has teamed with Enslaved for an exclusive white 2LP vinyl variant of Heimdal — limited to 200 copies worldwide. Get yours now!
Enslaved recently released Heimdal, the Norwegian extreme-metal juggernaut's 16th studio album. With a discography that deep (the group also have multiple EPs, demos and split releases to their name) and diverse (Enslaved have evolved over the last three decades through black metal and Viking metal to their current wide-screen, progressive metal sound), the band members have plenty of songs to be proud of.
With that in mind, we asked guitarist and composer Ivar Bjørnson to zero in on the one song that fills him with the most pride. He looked to Enslaved's latest and, to his mind, greatest: Heimdal.
"Congelia"
"Right now it is 'Congelia' from Heimdal," Bjørnson says. "The song means a lot to me and Enslaved as a band. It wasn't easy to shape it into what it became. I am very proud of us as a band, and have allowed myself to be quite proud of having created the song."
Breaking down Heimdal track by track, he described "Congelia" as "a tribute to the mid-tempo blast beat of the original Second Wave [of] Black Metal. An atmosphere far from the YouTube-bpm-records and bad-boy sexiness of modern black metal," he said. "It was once about bleak impressionism, monumental sonic structures and frightening and, at the same time, sometimes beautiful landscapes. Endurance, focus and craftsmanship."
