Guitarist / songwriter Ivar Bjørnson & the members of ENSLAVED have issued their second studio report on their new album:

“First of all I would like - on behalf of the whole band - to thank everybody out there for the massive feedback and support you’ve shown since we started spreading the news of recording a new album. A lot of interesting questions came in for the video Q & A.  People have commented both on Facebook and Myspace –  we’ve chosen to take that as a compliment and an inspiration!

“There will be another round of Q & As compiled from questions sent in by everyone wishing to do so – it will be announced when another round of question-harvesting is due. Also, someone mentioned that they would like to see these studio reports in a video version. We have something for you too! As we are recording, we are also filming quite a lot - from the actual recordings in the studio, as well as around the studio discussing gear, bringing along the camera for the occasional trip to the pub for beer sampling, celebrating [keyboard player] Herbrand [Larsen]’s birthday with Demonaz [of IMMORTAL] and other friends, filming trips to festivals, and on tour while the album is being made. It is all going to be some kind of ‘behind the scenes’ thing that we will release in connection with the release.  More details on that later.

“We are at the stage where things are starting to really take shape. All ‘basics’ are in place: drums, bass and rhythm guitars. [Lead guitarist] Ice Dale and I have been through a round of adding some dubs, melodic leads and effects; we’ll do some acoustics next before the keyboard, organ and vocal departments overtake the studio for a while before [adding] additional percussion.  Ice’s leads and my wacko-effects will be the last thing to be added. Parts of April will have other focuses: we are artists in residence at the Roadburn Festival in Tilburg (NL) and will do a short week’s worth of supporting Arch Enemy on the ‘Metal Hammer Meltdown’ Tour of the U.K. Coming back from all that, we will be heading for Örebro and Jens Bogrens Fascination Street for the mixing.

“We are pretty confident that we have found a golden ore in terms of the production. It can be a hassle setting up the recording ourselves, but having the technical competence of Herbrand combined with the really strong convictions on how we should sound within the band is the best combination for the recording at the point we’re at. I am not sure it is the right way to go for every band.  It probably wasn’t the right way to go for us some years ago – but now we’ve come to the point were certain aspects of the creation needs to be fully controlled by ourselves in order to take that extra leap forward.

“Again it will be me and Grutle [Kjellson, bassist & vocalist] doing the lyrics.  Grutle’s the first one to have complete lyrics ready and they look great. Again, we have deeply resonating and multi-layered, metaphoric lyrics with his unique mythological references. My own scribbling is slowly taking shape, and I feel we have found our strongest, most ambitious and most challenging concept so far.  It should be interesting both as just words to music as well as trigging more ‘philosophical’ contemplations. You chose.

‘Oslo, Norway - February 2010: Religious fundamentalists are giving speeches where they openly threaten society with terror and death for not living by certain dogmas – including punishing homosexuals with death. The Norwegian Black and Extreme Metal artists chose to…?’ (to be continued…)”

View the four-part video footage of ENSLAVED answering fan-submitted questions (via Facebook, MySpace and Twitter) here.  

Stay posted on ENSLAVED’s time in the studio at www.myspace.com/ENSLAVED, www.ENSLAVED.no, and www.youtube.com/user/enslavedofficial.