Metal Injection's Top 20 Albums Of 2023

When the pandemic forced In Flames to truncate the tour in support of their 2019 album, *I, the Mask*, the band went home to Sweden in a state of insecurity. Vocalist Anders Fridén began ruminating upon the nature of lost time—and how we deal with time in general. “What do we do with time?” he asks Apple Music. “If you know your time is up, how do you act? What do you say? What do you think? Do you regret a lot of things? If we know everything is going wrong, would we change? Would we act different?” Fridén and his bandmates—guitarist Björn Gelotte, bassist Bryce Paul Newman, drummer Tanner Wayne, and new guitarist Chris Broderick (ex-Megadeth)—ponder these questions and more on In Flames’ 14th album, *Foregone*. In combining the melodic death metal of their classic ’90s albums with the more modern metalcore approach of their recent output, In Flames have struck a delicate balance between two disparate musical eras. But it’s ultimately the lyrical content that proves most different from that of the band’s vast back catalog. “Most of our previous albums have been me looking inside and dealing with my own demons,” Fridén explains. “This one is more observational about the world around us.” Below, he comments on each song. **“The Beginning of All Things”** “The track ‘Foregone’ was going to be a three-parter at first. Our intention was to have a slow track first, then something really calm, then hit with an aggressive track at the end. But when Björn played this for me the first time, I knew it was an intro rather than a part of ‘Foregone.’ It sets the mood perfectly for the album. We used it for the intro on our previous tour, and it works really well. It has that Swedish melancholy and invites you into the album. Then, with the next track, all hell breaks loose.” **“State of Slow Decay”** “It’s like the DNA of In Flames, in a sense. It has the melody, the aggression, and then everything that we are known for. As soon as we wrote it, and I heard all the pieces together, I knew it was not something we would hide in the back of the album. This is where we set the pace. I think people will feel familiar with it because it has that In Flames sound. Whether you like it or not, we have a certain sound that is ours, and this is really ground zero for that.” **“Meet Your Maker”** “That was one of the first songs that we wrote, so it really set the vibe of the album with the double bass and the guitar upfront and the huge chorus that we have become known for in our later career. Going into this album, we talked about how we wanted to bring the guitars a little bit more in the front and have the drums a bit more punchy than in the past. I think this song is definitely telling that story. When we finished it, we felt we were on the right track.” **“Bleeding Out”** “We have so many faces and styles, but this one is a bit more open. I wanted something that was a little more calming after the assault of ‘State of Slow Decay’ and ‘Meet Your Maker.’ This is heavy, but it’s rooted in a Swedish folk-music tradition—but obviously reworked and done our way. It has a sad tone overall, but it’s big and groovy, and Chris’ solos are amazing.” **“Foregone Pt. 1”** “At first, part one was supposed to be part two and vice versa. But then I felt the heavier track had to be part one, especially coming out of ‘Bleeding Out.’ This is one of the heavier songs we’ve done, I think. There are similarities lyrically—and especially instrumentally—between the two parts of this song. Some of the riffs and melodies are in both songs, but they are reworked. I think people will feel the connection between the two.” **“Foregone Pt. 2”** “Part two is such a contrast to part one, which was super necessary, dynamically, for the album. This one is less heavy, but to me, it’s like listening back to albums like *The Jester Race* and *Whoracle* that we did in the ’90s. With \[the songs\] ‘Moonshield’ and ‘Gyroscope,’ we had that very—again—Swedish folk melody, which was an inspiration for us in the early days. This definitely has that and reminds me a lot of that time.” **“Pure Light of Mind”** “We’ve done a few ballads or slow songs in the past, and we really wanted something like that for this album. But it had to have a meaning—it had to have a place and still be heavy. To me, this is a celebration, but it has a sad undertone to it. I can really see this being a sing-along-type song live. Vocally, I approached it a different way because I’ve never really done that type of falsetto verse before. For me, it’s fun to do something that’s a little bit challenging because it’s so easy to go back to what you know. So, I did it, and it worked really well.” **“The Great Deceiver”** “This is the song that changed faces the most. It’s almost like punk-ish In Flames, but it started out kind of plain, to be honest. I’ve heard these riffs before again and again, so I told Björn that we have to attack this song in a different way. So, we changed a few things around—definitely the drums—and now I think it could be my favorite of the album. Tanner, our drummer, should get big props for being patient and listening to us. The way he executed this is amazing, and so are his drums all over the album.” **“In the Dark”** “This is another heavy song with a sad undertone. It’s got a big, open chorus that I’m looking forward to doing live. All these songs are meant to be played live, by the way. That’s how we approach music these days. Back in the day, it was more like, ‘Let’s see how many guitars we can add on top of each other!’ But now we write for two guitar players because that’s what we have onstage. A lot of people have told me this song is their favorite, so we might be onto something here.” **“A Dialogue in B Flat Minor”** “Lyrically, this is about mental health. It’s the talk we have with ourselves, and how easy it is to be locked up in that. So, there’s an inner dialogue going on between me, in this case, and whatever it might be. The song is written in B-flat minor, so that’s where the title comes from. We wrote it as an opening track for a live set, where you start off with the drummer and bass player, then one guitar player walks on, then the next guitar player walks on, and then I come in at the end.” **“Cynosure”** “This one is bass-heavy, like a tank rolling forward or something. The beginning really showcases Bryce and what he does on bass. And obviously, Tanner is showing off his skills on this one, too. It’s almost like a drum solo after the second chorus. Vocally, I just took a step back and followed the rhythm more than anything else. It has a different vibe, but I really like how this song turned out.” **“End the Transmission”** “The very last transmission after it’s over. That’s the lyrical concept: We’re done here. I say, ‘Hell is overcrowded, and heaven is full of sinners.’ Wherever we go in our afterlife, I don’t think it’s judged upon what we do. Whatever place is bad enough. I haven’t done a repetitive chorus for a while, but I wanted to repeat something almost like a mantra. So, I say, ‘End the transmission.’”

The third album from the masked, anonymous Brits of Sleep Token is also the third in a conceptual trilogy that began with their 2019 debut, *Sundowning*. Introduced with the stirring and dramatic leadoff single “Chokehold,” *Take Me Back to Eden* is another genre-defying exploration of music’s outer limits, incorporating elements of techno and tech-metal alongside R&B, post-rock, and pop—often in the same song. “Vore” spins out in Meshuggah djent-isms before swelling with the kind of strings that recall a battle scene from *Game of Thrones*. “Ascensionism” is an inventive and often bizarre mix of piano ballad, gospel, and ultra-modern metal. Closer “Euclid” sounds like a Lana Del Rey tune performed by an R&B singer and a chorus of aliens. Along the way, there are love songs (“The Apparition”), suicide ballads (“Are You Really Okay?”), and songs about loss (the title track). As always, mastermind Vessel’s vocals soar over the proceedings, offering lyrical mysteries in service to the nocturnal muse he calls Sleep. It’s as bewildering as it is impressive.

Ventura, California’s heavy metal institution Night Demon return with their third full-length album, Outsider, via Century Media Records on March 17, 2023. For more than a decade, Night Demon have defiantly flown the flag of traditional heavy metal, unwavering in the face of shifting industry trends and unscarred by global calamities. Even as they spent 2022 touring heavily worldwide in support of their compilation album, Year of the Demon, the trio consisting of Jarvis Leatherby (vocals/bass), Armand John Anthony (guitar) and Dusty Squires (drums) continued working tirelessly behind the scenes. The objective? To perfect their first collection of all-new material since 2017’s acclaimed Darkness Remains album. Make no mistake: Outsider represents Night Demon’s boldest, most ambitious effort to date. Never content to rest on their laurels by rehashing past glories, the band have challenged themselves musically and lyrically, pushing creative boundaries and evolving their sound far beyond their NWOBHM-worshipping origins into something truly singular. From a lyrical standpoint, Outsider marks Night Demon’s first full-blown concept album. To be sure, the band have always experimented with embedding thematic linkages between songs on each release, dating back to their 2015 debut album, Curse of the Damned. On Outsider, however, lyricist Jarvis Leatherby has dialed into a fully cohesive tale of alternate realities, mysterious portals, and the supernatural, intertwined with universal human feelings of alienation, loss, regret and revenge. Inspired by Leatherby’s lifelong affinity for horror movies as well as his pandemic-induced exile in the countryside of Northern Ireland, Outsider weaves a compelling yarn from its pastoral beginnings to its heart-pounding finale. Of course, this kind of epic storytelling demands an equally expansive musical backdrop that ebbs and flows to convey the full emotional range of Outsider. To achieve that result, Night Demon have reimagined the band’s songwriting and arrangements by embracing progressive elements and a newfound sense of dynamics that lend the music a decidedly cinematic quality. Longtime fans should not be alarmed. Outsider sounds like Night Demon through and through. The songwriting is perhaps the catchiest in the band’s discography, boasting massive hooks such as those found on the earworm title track, which is also the lead single. Elsewhere, there are plenty of adrenaline-fueled, headbanging moments on display in songs like the rollicking “Obsidian” and “Escape from Beyond,” with its searing guitar riffs, pounding drums, and urgent vocals. The difference this time lies in the peaks and valleys, the highs and lows. “Beyond the Grave” and “A Wake” showcase a somber dimension of Night Demon only hinted at on previous releases. The masterful closing track, “The Wrath,” encapsulates all of these dynamics in a roller coaster of wildly swinging emotions, tempos and feels. Simply put, Night Demon take the listener on a journey with Outsider. It’s a heavy and intense ride, so buckle up. You may never be the same again. And Night Demon are breathlessly awaiting the opportunity to bring Outsider to life on stages all over the world. Plans are afoot to perform the album live in its entirety when time and logistics allow, so keep your eyes peeled for dates at a city near you. Don’t wander in the dark, because Night Demon will find you.

“Metal has lost touch with the devil.” So says Avatar vocalist Johannes Eckerström when discussing the band’s ninth album. “I’m speaking purely musically—not so much lyrically.” The Swedish metal stars, whose work runs a dizzying gamut from death metal to alternative rock, have a point to make with *Dance Devil Dance*. “Heavy metal is ultimately a subgenre of rock ’n’ roll, and rock ’n’ roll is dance music,” the singer tells Apple Music. “Now, of course, there are a million ways of doing metal—which is the beauty of it—but I feel like a lot of the time, people forget to make their metal rock.” With that, Eckerström and his bandmates have set out to resurrect metal’s elusive groove. “To make something rock, you need a groove,” he says. “You need a solid rhythm section making some noise and enough in sync that you want to move your hips to it. And that’s true whether you are in a circle pit or slow-dancing. So that’s the train of thought here—having grooves that really connect with your body.” Below, he comments on some key tracks from the album. **“Dance Devil Dance”** “As far as title tracks go for albums, this might be our most clearly intended mission statement. Heavy metal is rock ’n’ roll, and rock ’n’ roll is dance music. There\'s no reason why a metal rhythm section shouldn\'t make you want to move your hips as much as a punk one or a soul one or a reggae one. As far as the devil part, I’m having fun with the symbolism in a way that probably pisses off both sides—religious people and people who feel some affinity for Satan.” **“Chimp Mosh Pit”** “The chimps in the song are two characters in one. You have the actual animal that is being used for testing and those kinds of things. When you hear about such powerful primates running amok and doing something to a human keeper, I struggle to sympathize with the human in most of those settings, and I have tremendous respect for the animal. Then you have the fact that we are also primates and closely related to chimps. If you look at the song, you find that humans are sometimes in the place of the chimps.” **“Valley of Disease”** “I was stumbling around this one all the way up to the finish line, but it became an excellent track when everything came together. \[Guitarist\] Jonas \[Jarlsby\] had that main riff and the electronic parts of the song forever, but the verse riff changed a million times before we found this. It’s funny because it’s so close to what the main riff is, which is kind of the thing you want to do with a song like this. You want to Black Sabbath it, trust the riffs and go where the song tells you to go. But it can take forever to dig out that specific little change in groove that makes sense.” **“On the Beach”** “This one, to me, is a bit like our Sepultura song. We usually lean more into closed hi-hats, keeping it tight together when we want to be as groovy as possible. We\'re not a funk group, but we do like that way of creating a tight groove. Here, the groove is created by letting it all loose. There’s a lot of drums, a lot of cymbals, a lot of noise laid on top of that main riff. It’s a bit of an homage to ‘Refuse/Resist’ and things like that. Every time we write an album, there’s always that week where I get really high on Faith No More, and I think you can hear that as well.” **“Do You Feel in Control?”** “It’s fair to say this is one of the more extreme songs of the album. As a band, we reference Queen as much as we reference The Beatles as much as we reference Obituary. But if you go back to what our fingers were doing when we were becoming Avatar, it was death metal like Cannibal Corpse and At The Gates. I feel some of our music could be described as ‘death ’n’ roll’ if that term was not already coined—and rightfully so—to describe Entombed’s music. But in a way, this song is creating a marriage between every crazy thing happening on this album.” **“Gotta Wanna Riot”** “Lyrically, this is one of the grimmer songs on the album, but it\'s a blatantly over-the-top take on people being very desperate. You’ve got the guy building the bomb in the basement and what he\'s going to do with that, but then you have the guy who works in the morgue and to save on food costs, he starts eating his clients—but with language that is a bit too light to talk about those awful things, which makes it particularly awful, which makes it all the more fun. Ultimately, the song is about completely losing your shit out of desperation, but also embracing that state of mind.” **“The Dirt I\'m Buried In”** “This ended up being a song that became very, very special to me. There\'s always one song on every album that has been seven years in the making, or sometimes more—parts of this song span a whole decade. It has this irresistible clean guitar lick, disco beats, and an anthemic chorus. You kind of struggle with letting a song just be what it wants to be sometimes. Then it became very emotionally significant, and we can already tell from reactions to it that it has become very significant for a lot of other people as well. I’m glad we set the baby bird free.” **“Clouds Dipped in Chrome”** “The first couple of bars of this show why old-school death metal is the best when you have the right sound, and that being primitive is often the most brutal thing you can do. I mean, I like more technical stuff in death metal too, but many times it turns too mechanical. I think death metal is served well when you’re pretty sure that all the guys in the band have bad breath. And this riff has terrible breath in the best possible way.” **“Violence No Matter What” (with Lzzy Hale)** “Once the guitars were sent to me and I started to noodle around with some vocals, it took about two seconds for it to turn into a duet without knowing with whom or how or which or what. But the idea of someone singing this together with us came right away, and Lzzy Hale was a very immediate choice. We have toured a bit with Halestorm, and I think she’s one of the greatest voices of our time. The five of us can create a lot within Avatar, but none of us is a talented woman. So that in itself just adds something to the sausage party. I think she enjoyed singing this, and we enjoyed the result of it.”

With their first album since 2016, Avenged Sevenfold takes an unexpected turn into existentialism. Written over a span of four years that included the pandemic, *Life Is But a Dream…* was inspired by the philosophy and writings of French author and Nobel Prize winner Albert Camus. The hypnotic lead single “Nobody” sets a reflective and pensive tone with orchestral strings as singer M. Shadows delivers snaky, overlapping vocal lines. Follow-up “We Love You” is an abrupt change of pace, with dissonant guitar bursts and a frenetic, Mr. Bungle-like arrangement that smashes dizzying old-school thrash into a slide guitar interlude. The entire album is all over the place—ragtime piano (title track), chamber music (part of “Game Over”), electro-pop (a few songs)—but for A7X, it’s a good place to be.

“I was thinking about way back in time when people were navigating by the stars. If they were sailing a ship and the stars weren’t visible, that would mean you can’t go anywhere, really.” That’s how Katatonia vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter Jonas Renkse explains the title of the Swedish goth-metal titans’ 12th album. It’s this sense of being adrift that permeates *Sky Void of Stars*, helping to create a melancholy and introspective experience rich in metallic and electronic atmosphere. “I think it’s a very common feeling among humans,” Renkse tells Apple Music. “At some point in your life, you could feel you have no direction, or you don’t know where you’re going next.” It’s probably no surprise that the pandemic got Renkse thinking along these lines. “We released our previous album just in the beginning of the pandemic, and it sort of froze in time,” he explains. “We couldn’t go anywhere—no tours, no gigs to promote the album. And it made us feel, of course, kind of crippled.” Below, he details each track on *Sky Void of Stars*. **“Austerity”** “I think it’s a perfect opener for this record because it sets the tone. I see the song as very serious. I’m not sure why, but to me, it has a serious vibe. It’s kind of dark, but it still has a really nice flow to it. It has bits and pieces of some complex stuff in there, but most of all, I think it’s got a really huge chorus, which I’m very happy with.” **“Colossal Shade”** “It’s a funny one because my favorite Kiss album is *Lick It Up*, and I wanted to do a riff that resembled the kind of riffing they did on that. It was very hooky stuff, but it still had some kind of evil touch to it. So, I found this first intro riff and I thought, ‘This is heavy metal,’ but of course I wanted to do it in a Katatonia way, so I added a lot of textures and keyboards and stuff. It’s not an easy task to mix *Lick It Up*-era Kiss with Katatonia, but if you don’t try, you never know how it’s going to sound. This is how it sounds to me.” **“Opaline”** “I had the electronic intro thing lying around on a hard drive before I started writing for this album. I write stuff all the time and put it away and sometimes forget about it. But some stuff really sticks with me, and this was one of them. It’s a little bit influenced by a Swedish pop-rock band called Kent, so I wanted to expand that sound into a Katatonia song. It’s got a bit of an arena vibe, but it’s very melancholic as well. To me, it turned out to be one of the best songs on the album.” **“Birds”** “The main riff was something I wrote a while ago, but I put it aside because I thought it resembled the band Paradise Lost too much, which was one of our biggest influences when we started Katatonia 30 years ago. But when I looked back on it later, I thought, ‘Why not make a song out of it?’ Because it definitely has a hook, and what’s wrong with paying tribute to Paradise Lost? They’re a great band. But I think it also turns into more of a Katatonia song when the vocals kick in.” **“Drab Moon”** “I think the verse part that starts immediately is super atmospheric. It was a pleasure to just dig into. Once I got the rhythm of the drums and the bassline done, I was just so inspired to start working with the textures and the keyboards and the guitar parts, which are very sparse. But I think when the choruses kick in, they have a little bit of early 2000s kind of Katatonia. So, it’s got bits and pieces of everything—the more recent stuff mixed with some more direct stuff from what we were doing earlier. It’s not uptempo, but it still has a lot of energy, I think.” **“Author”** “This is the song I took the album title from. It just struck me that this little phrase, ‘sky void of stars,’ sounds like a good album title. As for the song itself, the verses have a very common rhythm that we use with the drums and the bass, but then it goes into a main riff that doesn’t have vocals on it—which we always refer to as ‘the Metallica riff.’ It’s heavy, but it’s still groovy in a way, and it’s got the right notes to still feel a bit melancholic. That riff always makes me happy when I listen back to it.” **“Impermanence”** “It’s one of the later songs I wrote for the album. It’s a heavy ballad with a really nice hook in the chorus. It’s got a feature from Joel \[Ekelöf\] from the Swedish band Soen. We’ve been talking about doing something together for some time, but it never really amounted to anything beyond just talk. But then, I was working on this song and thought it would be the perfect time. So, I got in touch with him, and I think the end result is perfect. I think our voices complement each other in a nice way.” **“Sclera”** “It’s one of the first songs I wrote for the album. I remember thinking the chorus part is really heavy, so we put a lot of emphasis on doing it as heavy as we could. I really like the verses because they’re built around the bass guitar, which is not something that I always do. But for this one, I felt I wanted a bassline that was solid but also a bit melodic, so I could build the vocals and guitars around it instead of the other way around. So, I was trying to do something a bit different.” **“Atrium”** “This turned out to be the first single because everybody we played it for said it was a bit of an earworm. It still has the melancholic touch, but it’s very memorable. The song itself is kind of basic. It’s not complex at all. It’s just about emotions. It’s not prog rock or anything. It’s very much how we used to sound 15 or 20 years ago.” **“No Beacon to Illuminate Our Fall”** “This is probably the most proggy song on the album. I would regard it as being very adventurous because there’s a lot of things happening. It’s very dynamic—it’s got very mellow parts but also some of the hardest parts on the album, and a couple of really nice guitar solos. It’s the longest song, well over six minutes, so we thought it would be the perfect ending to the album. There’s a bonus track featured on some formats, but this is the real ending to the album. **“Absconder” (Bonus Track)** “I wanted to do something a little bit different from what I usually do, so I thought about the band Muse. I wanted to do something a little bit in their style. I’m not sure I succeeded, but it’s definitely something different from what Katatonia usually does. It’s a very heavy opening, and then it goes into a really nice verse that blends a lot of different stuff in there. It’s got the ethereal quality that I like, but also some really jagged parts coming out of nowhere. It’s a very happening song.”

Physical editions available here: lnk.to/KAT-SkyVoidOfStars/napalmrecords Meritorious masters of melancholic metal KATATONIA carry on their legacy of rearranging the order of the heavy music universe, proudly presenting their hauntingly beautiful next studio album, Sky Void of Stars, out January 20, 2022 via Napalm Records. Founded in 1991, KATATONIA have continually embraced the dark and the light alike and - living through genre evolutions beyond compare - ripened their own particular form of expression. From doom and death metal to soul-gripping post rock, they’ve explored endless spheres of the genre, accumulating only the very best aspects. With their previous album, City Burials (2020), ranking #6 on the German album charts, the outfit proved their gravitational force on the scene as an everlasting cycle. After signing with Napalm Records, the entity around founding members Jonas Renkse and Anders Nyström is ready to showcase its brilliance and illuminate the void in the scene with Sky Void of Stars. Emerging from the gloom, KATATONIA is a beacon of light - breathing their unique, never stagnant, atmospheric sound through this new 11-track offering, all written and composed by vocalist Jonas Renkse. Album opener “Austerity” provides a courting introduction to the album. Crashing through the dark, it convinces with memorable, mind-bending rhythms as it shifts with elaborate guitar riffs that perfectly showcase the musical expertise and experience of the band. Topped off by the dark, conjuring voice of Renkse and mesmerizing lyricism, the gloomy mood for the album is set. Songs like down-tempo “Opaline” and moody “Drab Moon” fully embrace their melancholic sound while fragile “Impermanence” is accented by the original doom metal roots of KATATONIA. Like a dark star, these pieces relume the dreariness, creating an ambient auditory experience with memorable hooks while still inducing the crashing sounds of hard guitar riffs and pounding drums. The experimental mastery of the quintet and their atmospheric approach is purely vivid, making this album a thrilling sensation. With “Birds”, the artists show off their explosive potential with a quick and energetic sound, proving their genre-defying style. Dazzling drums and heavy guitar riffs reflect the influence of their humble beginnings, while “Atrium” also plays into this highly energetic atmosphere, maintaining the gloomy ambience that characterizes KATATONIA with epic sounds and poetic lyrics to get lost in. KATATONIA is one of a kind in a state of perpetual evolution. Significantly shaping the genre while still staying true to their own musical values, they orbit the musical universe - leaving their imprints on the scene. Projecting their sound to the endless realms, Sky Void of Stars shines bright in metal and beyond!

As the undisputed kings of death metal, Cannibal Corpse rarely messes with their tried-and-true horror show of gargantuan riffs, dizzying drums, and gruesome lyrics. But their 16th studio album, *Chaos Horrific*, was made under unprecedented circumstances. “It was written almost directly after we’d finished working on our previous album, *Violence Unimagined*,” bassist and co-lyricist Alex Webster tells Apple Music. “We normally would make a new album only after a full tour cycle for the previous one, but due to the pandemic downtime from touring we decided to get started right away.” Webster says that the back-to-back processes may have contributed to the variety heard on *Chaos Horrific*. “Since we had just finished *Violence Unimagined*, it was easy to remember not to repeat musical ideas we’d used in those songs,” he explains. “I think these two albums feel somewhat related, but they also consist of songs that all sound very different from each other. On *Chaos Horrific*, each song really stands out from the next, but they’re all full-on Cannibal Corpse-style death metal. Consistency absolutely can coexist with innovation and variety.” Below, he and his fellow Cannibal Corpse songwriters—drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz, guitarist Rob Barrett, and guitarist/producer Erik Rutan—comment on the songs they penned lyrics for. **“Overlords of Violence”** Alex Webster: “We always like to start our albums off with a really aggressive song, so ‘Overlords’ seemed like the perfect choice. The lyrics describe a group of barbarians creating chaos and mayhem, and the relentless speed of the music fits that theme well. It’s straightforward musically and lyrically, aggressive from start to finish.” **“Frenzied Feeding”** Erik Rutan: “Lyrically, the song was inspired by the viciousness and heaviness of the music. It’s about a fictitious ruler from the Dark Ages who, through extreme methods and gruesome tactics, tortured and slaughtered his own people. To command and invoke fear in his people, he would then force the masses to eat the remains—or starve and die. Survival only achieved by desperate, heinous measures—feast or famine.” **“Summoned for Sacrifice”** Paul Mazurkiewicz: “This song is about 13 people chosen to dismember and kill one randomly chosen person. One by one, they will remove pieces of his body until he breathes no more.” **“Blood Blind”** PM: “This song is about mass mutilations to reset the human race. Genocide is embraced by society. Blood covers the Earth.” **“Vengeful Invasion”** Rob Barrett: “This is about victims of human trafficking eventually escaping after years of abuse. As they\'re fleeing the house that held them captive for so long, they decide to turn around and execute the ultimate reprisal—a home-invasion slaughter of their captors.” **“Chaos Horrific”** PM: “This song is about fighting for your life from a zombie attack, using an axe, a knife, a machete—whatever it takes to kill these things.” **“Fracture and Refracture”** AW: “This song’s lyrics are about a psychotic surgeon who is holding a person captive and slowly changing their physical form against their will. As is usually the case, the music was written before the lyrics on this one. Some of the riffs have a really dark, twisted sound, so the terrifying concept described in the lyrics complements that aptly.” **“Pitchfork Impalement”** PM: “This song is about a lunatic going on a killing spree with a pitchfork. Wrought-iron tines will penetrate skulls.” **“Pestilential Rictus”** AW: “This is a song with a cannibalistic, post-apocalyptic theme. We’ve had other songs that cover that type of scenario; this one specifically deals with a disease that causes flesh to rot and fall away, often leaving the victim’s teeth permanently exposed in a perpetual ‘grin’ of horror.” **“Drain You Empty”** ER: “This was the final song that I wrote for the album. Musically, it flows and weaves through depths of darkness and insanity. The dreary and dismal vibe inspired me lyrically to create an engulfing vision of a force, a power, an entity draining the life and soul out of one’s being, through the conscious and the subconscious, overpowering every sense of being, invoking insanity and fear until inevitable death.”

On their 16th album, progressive black-metal masters Enslaved have fashioned a concept record about Heimdal, the Norse god who guards a bridge that leads to the heavens. But as guitarist Ivar Bjørnson points out, the Norwegian band has a long history with this deity—they had a song called “Heimdallr” on their first demo back in 1992. “It’s not like he came back into the fold,” Bjørnson tells Apple Music. “It’s more like he came into focus. I compare it to how we have people in our lives that we just have a connection with. We might move across the globe or not see them for years, but when you do, you continue the conversation from wherever you left off.” Sonically speaking, *Heimdal* is the first extreme metal album mixed for Spatial Audio rather than remixed for it after the fact. “It was such a revelation being in the studio, hearing all these sounds traveling like I had imagined in my own head while writing the album,” Bjørnson enthuses. “I felt really privileged that we had this chance to use these dimensions of space. There are always new places to go.” Below, he comments on each track. **“Behind the Mirror”** “There’s this dilemma hinted at in mythology about the relationship between Odin and Heimdal—that one might be the son of the other. But it’s not really cleared up. First, you read that Heimdal might be the son of Odin, the biggest god. And then, the next sentence is the other way around. The myth of Heimdal is even hinting at the possibility of Odin not necessarily being an actual humanoid creature but being a state of mind. The bonus was me discovering, two weeks ago, that the song title was done before by one of my favorite bands, Kreator.” **“Congelia”** “A lot of the time, we end up exploring all the different styles we use—be it prog rock or occult rock or ’70s sequencer ambient—and then we mix our root elements of experimental black metal into it. But I played the sketch of this song for a friend of mine who was seriously worried that I’d gone off and lost my mind for a little while there. He was like, ‘Do you know how this sounds to a functioning human?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, that’s why I’m playing it.’ I just wanted it to be extreme, but I also wanted it to be possible to listen to for eight minutes. So, I went in and made some adjustments.” **“Forest Dweller”** “That song is a bit outside of the interaction between Odin and Heimdal. Odin has a lot of interesting aspects to him. He was a magician, for example, but also the father of war. More recently, there were some very right-wing people here in the Nordic countries who took to the streets doing these vigilante things, saying they were protecting women and children. They called themselves the Soldiers of Odin. But Odin is not the god that I would put next to any children or women. Odin would do anything for the hell of it.” **“Kingdom”** “A human being running is a very basic and important symbol for me. It’s an important symbol in modern culture and history. Think about the marathon or the bringing of the Olympic torch into the stadium. It’s more of a sport thing these days but running used to be for survival or for delivering messages. You had runners as part of societies—they would deliver messages over long distances. If the message was really important, they would send more than one runner. I also think about Iron Maiden’s ‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.’ That title was sprinkled with gold. The song was great before I even heard it.” **“The Eternal Sea”** “The starting point for ‘The Eternal Sea’ is a very central part of our identities as people in the band. We are all Western Norwegians, and we all come from small places directly on the coast. When we were teenagers, our first drummer, his mother’s partner went out to sea for work and didn’t come home. He died on the sea. It was a very traumatic episode, but what I realized when I got older is that these small societies on the coast are prepared for this, in a sense. His mother, she knew who to call, and they knew how to take care of her and her family. It was a chilling but almost comforting experience in that way.” **“Caravans to the Outer Worlds”** “This was the title track of our last EP, but later I realized it was also the starting point for this album, so we had to include it here. We’re part of the human race who won the evolutionary battles because of the ability to bring along people who don’t have, let’s say, a victory ability, but they have maybe an ability to foresee outcomes of situations. Maybe they have a special relation to nature. But nowadays, we’re in the stage of evolution where we step on the weaker people and take whatever they have. I went from being a frustrated young man about that to going, ‘It looks like a good day to take off into space. You guys stay here, and we’ll inhabit somewhere else.’” **“Heimdal”** “I knew this song was going to be called ‘Heimdal’ before we wrote it, so I knew it had to have a certain power to live up to the title. It’s a bit like arriving at the house and seeing that the front door is several hundred meters tall. You realize, ‘Oh, shit—it’s Heimdal himself.’ We knew we had to deliver a lot to associate with this deity. And I was pleasantly surprised that we got that close to what we were trying to do.”