Enslaved release Mið and an I Am Ice visualizer with Johan Sara Jr.

Enslaved released their seventeenth studio album, Mið, through Nuclear Blast on October 30. The label’s official page lists eight tracks and a running time of 41 minutes and 59 seconds. Its Old Norse title refers to the centre or middle, providing a central idea for the Norwegian band’s latest recording.

The release is accompanied by a visualizer for I Am Ice featuring Sami musician Johan Sara Jr. His contribution draws on the joik tradition. The eight-song programme also includes Non-Being, Solar Will, Mountain, Parting, Tales of Trees and I Miðju. Another guest, Kevin Kicking Woman, appears on Spirit Helper.

Explaining I Am Ice, singer and bassist Grutle Kjellson said he first wrote the complete lyrics without fitting them to the music. His study of Old Norse skaldic verse influenced that process, although he did not claim strict historical authenticity. He described the song’s subject as passing through personal darkness and finding a way to rise again.