Band:	Enslaved
Album:	In Times
Style:	Progressive black metal
Release date:	March 06, 2015
A review by:	Auntie Sahar

01. Thurisaz Dreaming
02. Building With Fire
03. One Thousand Years Of Rain
04. Nauthir Bleeding
05. In Times
06. Daylight

Let no one ever have to question the consistency of the Norsemen in Enslaved. From the icy black metal of their debut, right down to the more complex nature of their recent material, the band have garnered a well deserved reputation as mature and innovative songwriters. 2015's In Times is a slightly more accessible mark in their discography, one that, while good, also feels as though it could have gone a little bit deeper.

In Times retains most of the sounds Enslaved have established for themselves over their past four albums or so. A mid-paced black metal core sees enhancement by a number of melodic and progressive underpinnings, as usual helping the music to span a wide range of moods and deliveries, from the aggressive approach of "Thurisaz Dreaming," to the dreamy mood and incredible guitar solo on "Daylight." As could be expected, for many listeners this is probably going to be the type of album where you don't entirely "get it" on the first listen, and where you discover something you didn't before with each subsequent playthrough. This technique of sophisticated layering is something Enslaved have been proving themselves as adept with for some time now, and In Times is certainly no exception.

However, despite its complexity, In Times also comes across as a lot more simplistic than some of Enslaved's previous material. Although it still holds onto a lot of interesting rhythms and compositional approaches, there seems to have been a shift in how Enslaved take to their progressive personality. "Building With Fire" seems more like a bizarre form of extreme rock than anything else, and the viking chants on "One Thousand Years Of Rain" seem a lot more straightforward than what we've become accustomed to with the band. Although they certainly have many memorable songs, "catchy" has never really been a word I've associated with Enslaved, and the slight increase in that element on In Times is enough to noticeably change the dynamic of the music. There's definitely been a change in atmosphere here: the band's proggy undertone is a little less dark and mysterious, and more direct and stripped down.

In the future, when Enslaved have called it quits and left their fans to muse upon their discography, I still think that Isa and Axioma Ethica Odini are going to be regarded as the crown jewels of their progressive era. But don't let that fool you: In Times is still, on the whole, a very engaging, well rounded release; it merely shifts things around a bit. And if anything, that's only testament to the fact that we're dealing with musicians bent on making each album a unique creation unto itself, and giving us something different with each encounter.