Enslaved has always seemed to have had their senses in the right place; as far as standing tall to their nationalistic-viking heritage beliefs, and also contiuing to produce quality black metal for years upon years. It's safe to say that along with Bathory Blood Fire Death, Enslaved was primarily responsible for the rise or revolution of viking bands within the scene in the early to mid 90's which has flourished untill today. However, the Viking scene, excluding a few nobles, has always given me the impression of being a predominatly mainstream genre, filled with blind followers who think it's cute to dress up in their silver armour, and take pictures with swords in the forest in the back of their apartment complex.

Yet I have always kept an open spot for Enslaved, cus' they were never really "viking metal" to me, except for the fact that their lyrics and concepts were so based upon ancient mythology, and the distant Nordic gods. Yggrdasil is a prime example of this fact, which was the band's first primordial demo back in 92'. It has one song from the split, Allfoor Odinn, which was always one of their best. It sounds ten times better than the emperor split though! The best thing about this material however, is that they never sounded so like this again. The production is absolutely horrid, and unsurprisingly, suits the music just fabulously. If they could have just stuck with their earlier sound...!

Grutle once again spits forth his lyrics in particularly ear fucking fashion, totally scraping the flesh off the inside of my skull. Fortunately that is one thing they never changed!

Yggdrasill has got five songs, one of them, as I said before, later appearing on their split cd. All the tracks are deep in the Enslaved vein, although somewhat faster and more aggresive then afterwards. The sound is totally unique to this recording, and you will never hear anything remotely like it again on the later studio albums.

© 2002 orodruin