Enslaved have always managed to delicately thread a quite tricky needle, that being making spiritually activated black metal without slipping into the kind of commonly documented malfeasance the genre can get itself into when especially concerned in those matters. Their usage of Nordic spiritual history to guide their music feels not like supremacist anthems but the kind of inwardly-assured earnest spirituality of people who use the real of the spirit to connect with the past and understand the richness of the literary and imaginative vistas of the human heart, the natural emergent poetry that shapes culture and the individual both.
It’s in this light that “Spirit Helper,” their collaboration with Kevin Kicking Woman (an Elder of the Blackfeet Nation), feels both natural and fitting. The marriage of their muscular approach to the realms of the spirit evoked by music with the folk song of the Blackfoot people is utterly synchronous. Both sounds evoke open plains and the way the wind wraps around a body, even if one is often snowy fjords and the other is the plains and mountains of the American Midwest. It shows a unity as well of the earnest practice of the spirit, not that faiths and their histories are identical but that we often reach toward the same heights of eternity and majesty, both to rise up as equals to it and to kneel as subservient before it.
Learning that Enslaved received the recording of the vocal and crafted the music around it pivots the track once again. Without that information, it’s very easy to imagine that the Viking metal behemoths had crafted a piece on their own, as fitting as it is especially with the past roughly half-decade of their material, only to solicit a fitting complementary vocal performance from elsewhere. That they let Kevin Kicking Woman’s performance of this prayer song lead their composition presents the song as one of equals, elevating an already obviously beautiful song to greater heights while providing its meaning even greater depths. It’s our Heavy Song of the Week.
Honorable Mentions
Living Weapon – “The Leaving Process”
This is the way metalcore should be: non-melodic, ruthless, genuinely threatening. “The Leaving Process” sounds like what getting torn apart in the baptism of sweat and blood that is the pit feels like. Those chugging breakdowns practically give off whiffs of the stench of bodies colliding in darkened clubs, the band performing on the floor making eye contact with you as you pinball from shoulder to shoulder. There’s just enough musical sophistication at work here to tell you they pay attention to the shifting tides of modern hardcore, that they know what they’re doing with their instruments. Living Weapon doesn’t allow their capacity for sophistication to overtake the mission, however, which is pummeling hardcore with a metallic edge to it. That the guitarist is a musclebound behemoth headbanging relentlessly simply fits. If Vein.fm, the guitarist’s other band, is perhaps a bit too abstract for you, this will beat the hell out of you directly.
REZN – “Aerial Birth”
Once upon a time, REZN was a stoner doom band with a logo referencing the ever-immortal Black Sabbath record Master of Reality. It is within moments of “Aerial Birth,” the newest single from the band’s upcoming album Cycles in the Infinite Dream, that you can tell those days are gone now. This song contains a panoramic view of the expanding sonic world of REZN, with a heavy shoegaze chorus, dream pop melodies, a gorgeous Floydian or perhaps Yes-derived slide guitar part, all set against an oceanic progressive metal tapestry. It showcases as well that this more artful end of heavy music, sometimes derided by those closer to the mainstream as purely abstruse and unapproachable, is something anything but; the breadth and beauty of “Aerial Birth” is immediate and obvious, provided hopefully an open door to those unfamiliar with the rich waters of this side of the heavy music world.
Split Chain – “Headway [DLX] (ft. Roman Candle) / SPIT [DLX] (ft. False Reality)”
Two for the price of one! Split Chain, who released their brilliant debut album motionsblur last year, promote the upcoming deluxe edition of that record featuring over a dozen new and re-recorded tracks with this double-single. In the video, the drummer wears an Emperor t-shirt while the vocalist wears a Carcass shirt; that this does not properly signal the sound of the singles is indicative of the depth of the band. “Headway” is grungegaze in the same mold as Teenage Wrist, Fleshwater, and the like, while “SPIT” hybridizes a very Deftones groove with death metal vocals in a manner that manages to slip past nu-metal entirely. It feels like listening to full histories of alternative and heavy music, taking one part the commercial boom of death metal in the early ’90s with one part 120 Minutes, the alternative rock music block staple of the same era.
In conclusion, this week’s Heavy Song of the Week is Enslaved‘s “Spirit Helper,” a powerful collaboration with Kevin Kicking Woman that showcases the band’s unique blend of spiritually activated black metal and folk music. The song is a testament to the band’s ability to craft meaningful and beautiful music that transcends genres and boundaries. With its honorable mentions, including Living Weapon, REZN, and Split Chain, this week’s selection offers a diverse range of heavy music that is sure to satisfy fans of all genres.
Pixel P. Snarkbyte, widely regarded as the “Shakespeare of Sh*tposts,” is a video game expert with a unique knack for turning pixels into punchlines.
Born in the small town of Respawn, Pennsylvania, Pixel grew up mashing buttons on an ancient NES controller, firmly believing that “blowing into the cartridge” was a sacred ritual passed down through generations.
Pixel P. Snarkbyte: proving that life, much like a buggy open-world game, is better with a little lag-induced chaos.
