IN TIMES

Enslaved have pulled off a seemingly impossible double-feat with their career. Not only have they managed to keep up with consistent quality well over a decade after most bands would have met their expiry date, they also continuously reinvented themselves while they were at it. With every Enslaved record, you could count on them not to rest on their laurels. Their inevitable prog rock destination was pretty apparent even from the start, but like rewatching a favourite film, it was easy to love an experience of the journey, even if you already knew how it was going to end up.

I've never been quite as sold on Enslaved as some of my friends, often having found them a bit too formal and restrained. That said, they always managed to keep me engaged throughout their career. I think they hit their stride with Axioma Ethica Odini at the start of the decade. By that point, their progressive metal transformation was complete, and you can bet they made a good time of it. That album came with the sort of energy and fulfillment that comes when a band is making the music they were born to create. On RIITIIR and now with In Times, it finally sounds like Enslaved found their promised land and are learning to stick with it.

Even if it was one of my most anticipated albums of last year, In Times never seemed to catch my attention at the time. I enjoyed it the few times I heard it, but unlike the triad of albums that came before it, it never served to leap out and demand I listened more. It took a wide revisitation of the band's material to finally push me to give this album the time it deserved. For one, I'm glad I did. As any fan might have predicted, In Times holds itself to a high standard of quality. At a glance, it's very much the same upbeat prog sound they've been doing since Axioma Ethica Odini. At the same time, it's less immediate than its predecessors, preferring to emphasize melody over the crunchy fireworks showcased on RIITIIR. Enslaved's perennial innovation has finally shown its signs of slowing down, but staying in the same place isn't keeping them from writing some fantastic material.

I don't think it's really fair to think of Enslaved as having stagnated. The big leaps are conceivably over from the looks of it, but rather than staying in the same place, it's better to think the band as having slowed down to a more typical rate of evolution. While the developments get slighter with each album, there's still enough to distinguish In Times from its 2012 predecessor. While I identified RIITIIR with its heaviness or Axioma with its upbeat energy, the material here is distinguished by its emphasis on melody and atmosphere. In a certain way, it's almost as if they wanted to recreate echoes of Monumension for their latest era. All of that is perfectly fine with me. Enslaved trying to be dark or heavy on recent albums felt vaguely like an out-of-touch dad picking up skateboarding in an effort to appeal to his kids. Even if the attempt at heaviness was sincere and well-executed, it's not the proper fit for them, and hasn't been in a long while. By that rubric, In Times' melodic shift is all for the best.

Whether it's "Building with Fire" or my personal favourite "Nauthir Bleeding", a lot of the album's best moments are thanks to Herbrand Larsen's clean vocal performance. In an album I thought I could predict note for note, that's a part of it that has me surprised. Since Enslaved began using Herbrand's voice to contrast Grutle's snarl, his delivery was often thin and timid, limiting the emotional effect of their choruses. I was happy to hear his voice improve on RIITIIR, and the same has happened to an even greater extent here. While the rest of the band has remained the same, Herbrand belts out with all the confidence and charisma Enslaved deserve to be fronted with. Although the rest of the sound here is very familiar, that one relatively small improvement does a lot to help the sound as a whole.

In Times doesn't have a highlight quite as high as "Death in the Eyes of Dawn", but it does come across as a much more coherent and consistent album than RIITIIR. Only the track "In Times" itself feels overdrawn and somewhat boring. The rest of these tracks feel warm, urgent and fiery. Even if I've learned not to expect anything really new from them in the future, Enslaved are learning to impress me in new ways. The style they've settled on is resulting in some of the most solid material in their entire career. Better still, they're not using the settled style as an excuse to be lazy. Rather, a lot of the tiny improvements that may have been swept aside by groundbreaking shifts are given much-desired attention. If I've ever been cynical about the modern era of Enslaved at times, all it seems to take is a new album to remind me they really do deserve practically all of the praise they receive.

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