ENSLAVED
Mið
Nuclear Blast Records
Release date: October 30, 2026

Tracklist:
1. Non-Being
2. I Am Ice (feat. Johan Sara Jr)
3. Solar Will
4. Mountain
5. Spirit Helper (feat. Kevin Kicking Woman)
6. Parting
7. Tales of Trees
8. I Miðju

Playing time: 41:59min

It’s a rare and remarkable feat that 35 years and now 17 albums in, Enslaved’s horizons still continue to expand. Immune to the familiar rock narratives – the nervous, zeitgeist-chasing detour before the inevitable ‘return to form’, the gradual erosion of a founding urgency or the retracing of past glories – every stage of the Bergen band’s evolution, every new phase entered, has felt like a genuinely organic act of discovery and renewal. Their journey has been at once a commitment to a promise that found its embryonic form in the Norwegian black metal scene they emerged from, and a willingness to challenge both orthodoxy and themselves from the off to make that potential manifest. Enslaved’s new album, “Mið”, an Old Norse word for ‘centre’, or ‘middle’, marks another departure, and another new beginning. The band have always dealt in states of transition, nor least on the thematically linked, mythology-steeped rites of passage that were 2020’s “Utgard” and 2023’s “Heimdal”. What lay beyond, however, was… unexpected. 

“I started with the songwriting very shortly after ‘Heimdal’,” Ivar reveals, “but I had a feeling that the old ways didn’t work anymore. I’d always been chipping away, playing on the guitar and then on keyboards, something would happen then I’d work on that. But once I had a bunch of demos, none of it felt like it was good enough to follow up on ‘Heimdal’. It felt like we had to go somewhere else.” Rather than build up songs incrementally, putting flesh upon bones, Ivar decided that he would wait for the songs to come to him, that he would become their channel, not just their craftsman. This new approach brought with it a new sense of responsibility: the need to weed out the noise, to meditate, educate, to listen and to trust. That trust wasn’t just in himself, it extended to his bandmates: Grutle, who once more was tasked with the lyrics; guitarist Ice Dale, whose irrepressible, endlessly rejuvenating riffs have been such a core element of Enslaved’s sound; keyboardist Håkon Vinje; and drummer/producer Iver Sandøy. Booking a studio with no material ready was a roll of the dice, but also a testament to the band’s belief in themselves, and each other.

“It was a bit nerve-wracking,” says Ivar, “but the payoff is that once the ideas materialized and we started working on them, they were very clean cut, very to the point, and everybody got them instantly. So there’s a freshness for me listening to what we created. It’s a bit strange coming to terms with the album because it was so intense.” 

“We did feel a sense of insecurity at first,” Grutle admits. “But there’s an excitement with that, because we had to deliver. We’re pretty confident on our instruments individually, we just needed something to work on. So that insecurity brings a certain emotion, it brings a certain focus, and it also enlightens a very interesting spark and ignition, and everybody was on target right away.” “Mið” sounds like a band reborn, building their unique, expansive cosmology from a vital new starting point. With the swerving prog flourishes and krautrock wormholes dialled back, these eight tracks fizz with a newfound clarity and purpose while casting yet more illumination on the band’s kaleidoscopic palette. Of the many dualities that Enslaved have embodied over the years, the urge to look within and reflect while embarking on another round of unbridled sonic adventurism has become a motor to be fully reinterpreted. Here, it’s given its most explicit expression on “Solar Will”, both a paean to a divine spark, and a testament to the album title’s fundamental concept: a centre whose reach is infinite. Its heaving opening riffs are the ignition for a track that’s charged and radiant, orbited by huge whooshing FX, as it becomes an exuberant rallying cry before Ice Dale’s leads appear like dawn light spilling
across a mountainscape. 

Likewise, “Parting” resonates with the sense of something wondrous being woven into being. Lush
piano ripples usher you into a magical glade before transforming into stunning, luminous bursts and
more luxuriant leads, as scale-shifting minor keys maintain a constant sense of anticipation before
depositing you back at its intro, but leaving you breathless at the scope of what’s unfolded.
The cover for “Mið” was inspired by a Bronze Age stone monument found in the township of Skjeberg,
Østfold Norway, near the Swedish border, but removed by a museum in the 1960s. It’s one of a
number of archaeological structures, from Stonehenge to a Medicine Wheel in Wyoming, that provided lyrical and thematic inspiration for the album. Not only are they abiding mysteries, they’re emblems of connection, for the archetypes that surface across disparate cultures, and the binding effects they had within the individual communities that built them.

“When you’re standing at a mound or looking at petroglyphs, something people created 3,000 years ago, you can still feel a presence,” says Grutle. “That’s always triggered me, and this album is trying to explain the meanings behind them and the approach people had, the universal need to develop, and to transform those ideas into poetry.” 

For Ivar, that inspiration fed into the music too: “There’s the mystical and esoteric side to those monuments, but there’s also a simple side. In the evolutionary race when there were so many human strands, we built our advantage in the evolutionary race not because we were the strongest, or the most clever, but we were the most social. There’s a lot of focus on connection in today’s society, but it’s on a level that doesn’t really satisfy our foundational needs. So we’re asking what truly connects us? It can be something simple, like experiencing music together, or going on a hike.” “Mið” features two tracks that put the idea of cross-cultural connection into mesmerising effect. “I Am Ice” features Johan Sara Jr, a Sami yoik singer deeply rooted in old tradition who Iver had recorded in his studio a couple of years beforehand. His stark chants and throat-sung incantations resonate amidst a matrix of huge shunting grooves, guitars raging as if they were dogs gnashing at the end of a chain, Grutle’s granite-grinding rasp and reedy keyboards, leading out on Johan’s resurfaced vocals and a suggesting that the ancient can always find its echo in our present moment. The album’s lead single, “Spirit Helper”, was inspired by Ivar’s deep connection to the Fire In The Mountains festival, set on the Native American Blackfeet Nation’s sacred tribal ground in East Glacier, Montana, both as a musician having played there with his solo electronic project Baardspec, and as a consultant. The song is centred around a morning chant to connect to the spirits, performed by Kevin Kicking Woman, a tribal elder Ivar was introduced to at the festival. Ushered in by mellifluous textures and tended to by lush, languid post-rock guitars glinting like the sun glinting off morning dew, Kevin’s vocals are an act of startling, ageless communion. They’re augmented by tribal percussion as the song bursts into bristling new life, becoming a carrier signal for the sacred as potent on the smallest scale as the largest. “Kevin’s vocals were recorded at a ceremony in New York,” says Ivar, “and the important thing with that song was to preserve the original vocal recording and mould ourselves around it. I had to go back to the drawing board a few times while I was trying to work out what was going on in his singing, rhythm-wise. But then you get some stuff for free. The open strings we use most are C sharp, G sharp, C sharp, and when I checked back with Kevin’s recording, it turned out he was singing the whole thing in C sharp and G sharp. He hadn’t heard Enslaved before. When I asked him about it, he said, ‘Yeah, of course, that’s how the universe works.’” 

“Mið” is an album that sheds light on harmonies and dialogues embedded all around us: between the ways of the past, and how they can bring enlightenment to the present, between small kernels of truth and their ability to project onto the most universal on canvases, and between band members relying on instinct and each other to create a record that galvanises on every possible level. “Right now, this feels like the first in something that’s coming,” says Ivar. “I thought ‘Heimdal’ would be the same, but now that feels like the conclusion of something else. It feels like it’s going to be the beginning of a lot of fun things.” 

“I’ve come to realise that this is a really positive album,” Grutle concludes. “It’s about growth, it’s about digging yourself out of a pit, and it’s about leaving yourself open to the element of surprise. It’s about all the possibilities of being a human being.”

Credits:
IVER SANDØY - VOCALS, PERCUSSION
IVAR BJØRNSON - GUITARS
GRUTLE KJELLSON - VOCALS, BASS
HÅKON VINJE - KEYS, BACKING VOCALS
ARVE "ICE DALE" ISDAL - LEAD GUITARS, GUITARS

Vocals on “I Am Ice” by Johan Sara Jr.
Vocals on “Spirit Helper” by Kevin Kicking Woman.
Additional FX, percussive FX, synths by Ivar Bjørnson & Iver Sandøy.

Produced by Ivar Bjørnson, Iver Sandøy & Grutle Kjellson.
Recorded at Duper, Solslottet, Peersonal Sound, Conclave & Earshot and Scandinavia House NYC
between October 2025 and April 2026.
Mixed and Mastered at Fascination Street Studios May 2026.

Engineered and recorded by Iver Sandøy, Ivar Bjørnson & Ice Dale.
Assistant drum engineering by Vegard Lemme.
Mixed by Jens Bogren.
Mastered by Tony Lindgren.