ENSLAVED — Mardraum: Beyond the Within (review)

ENSLAVED — Mardraum: Beyond the Within album cover Album · 2000 · Black Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
Conor Fynes
'Mardraum: Beyond The Within' - Enslaved (7/10)

Journeying through Enslaved's discography, it is rather remarkable how much they were able to change their sound, without changing their genre. Black metal has always been the root and heart of what these Norwegian metallers are all about, but as the albums went by, Enslaved went through several incarnations. 'Mardraum' of the most pivotal albums in Enslaved's development from a more primitive black or viking metal act to the progressive metal powerhouse they are today. After two fairly bland albums with 'Eld' and 'Blodhemn', I was beginning to tire of the fairly underwhelming viking metal that Enslaved was doing after their excellent first and second albums, which had been more black metal oriented. While this album lacks the polish or refinement of the band's later work, 'Mardraum' would see Enslaved experimenting quite a bit with their sound, and set the stage for their later, more progressive material.

'Mardraum: Beyond The Within' opens with almost an overture of sorts; 'Stшrre enn Tid - Tyngre enn Natt' goes through a number of different ideas and sounds before the vocals are even itnroduced. From the opening minutes of this album, the listener is introduced to everything this album has to offer; heavy moments of blackened thrash metal, ambiance, quasi-psychedelic soft moments and plenty of atmosphere to go around. The vocals eventually come into the music, but as opposed to the raspy snarl I may have been expecting after hearing some very heavy opening riffs on the album, there are clean vocals, sung in the band's native Norwegian. The clean singing of Grutle Kjellson is fairly rough here, and works better as a chanting drone, rather than a voice that can hold much of a melody. Luckily, Enslaved appears to be aware of this and rarely uses the clean vocals for anything other than to give some added feeling of Scandinavian folk to their sound, amounting usually to a monotone delivery that does not harm the sound, but also never feels much in the way of passion.

The album is rough as I've said, a little long for its own good, and fairly inconsistent, but these are all byproducts of the album's sheer ambition. There are elements of so much here, and that really makes 'Mardraum' one of the more relevant albums in the band's discography. Hearing a primitive collision of 60's psychedelia and black metal here is great, and Enslaved helped to lay the foundation for a wider range of progressive black metal with this album. It is rough around the edges, but it is diverse, heavy, and full of surprises.
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