ENSLAVED — Mardraum: Beyond the Within (review)

ENSLAVED — Mardraum: Beyond the Within album cover Album · 2000 · Black Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
bonnek
Mardraum is the first Enslaved album of the new decade. It is one of their best and most essential ones, and it bridges their black metal fury of the 90’s with the progressive directions they would take in the 00’s. The sound is still raw but the production is sharp, clear and heavy. The music has opened up compared to Blodhemn, with more room for atmospherics and composition.

Mardraum is breathtaking, stunning, shocking, evil, ice-cold, morbid, ultra-aggressive, dissonant, possessed, insane, evil, satanic, primal and yet it's also full of stunning riffs, chilling melodies, rhythm, icy screams, growls and chants.The exceptional qualities are maintained through all songs. Maybe one or two could have been left off to make an even more devastating impact. This is very extreme music of course and not easy to get into, but if you can stomach it you will be overawed by it.

This is one of the Enslaved essentials next to "Eld", "Isa" and "Axioma Ethica", not as streamlined and digestible ad the last two but more focussed and concise then "Eld". To compare it to classical music is maybe a bit of a stretch but this is as disturbing as the Sacre Du Printemps was almost a century ago. A worship of all things pagan, untamed and hedonistic. Probably my favourite Black Metal album.
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