Norwegian progressive metal pioneers ENSLAVED have released "Spirit Helper," a collaborative track with Kevin Kicking Woman, an elder of the Blackfeet and Cree Nations based in Montana, marking one of the band's more unusual and personal cross-cultural projects to date.
The song grew out of a relationship built over several years through Fire In The Mountains, an annual festival held on Blackfeet land in East Glacier, Montana, which ENSLAVED began attending in 2019. Connections formed through shared musical circles — including ties to WARDRUNA and the By Norse Music label — gradually opened the door to a deeper relationship with the Blackfeet community, culminating in Kicking Woman sharing a traditional morning prayer song that became the foundation for "Spirit Helper."
"Songs are the Blackfoot way of knowing," Kicking Woman explained of the collaboration's significance. "Expressing relationship and responsibility, belonging and accountability." ENSLAVED guitarist Ivar Bjørnson described the project as an example of "what can happen when people meet openly, listen carefully, and allow themselves to be changed."
The track's artwork, created by Nicholas Rink, layers symbolic imagery over a vintage National Geographic map of Norway — ocean waves representing connection, red lines symbolizing shared humanity, yellow spirals depicting the song's movement, stars as sources of power, and triangles honoring the musicians involved.
ENSLAVED's current lineup features Bjørnson and Arve "Ice Dale" Isdal on guitars, Grutle Kjellson on vocals, Håkon Vinje on keyboards and clean vocals, and Iver Sandøy on drums. The band has spent more than three decades pushing the boundaries of Norwegian extreme metal, blending Viking and black metal roots with progressive songwriting, and "Spirit Helper" continues that exploratory streak by looking outward to other cultures' relationships with land, ritual, and memory.
The collaboration underscores the growing ties between Scandinavian folk-influenced metal scenes and Indigenous musical traditions elsewhere, a connection that has deepened in recent years through festivals like Fire In The Mountains. For ENSLAVED, "Spirit Helper" stands as a rare document of that exchange — one built on years of trust rather than a one-off gesture — and a striking addition to the band's already genre-defying catalog.