ENSLAVED Unveil 'Tales Of Trees' — And Take 'Mið' Across Europe With SÓLSTAFIR In February

ENSLAVED have released "Tales Of Trees", the third single from "Mið", the album that arrives October 30 via Nuclear Blast Records. It is their seventeenth, and it lands in their thirty-fifth year.

The title is literal and also not. "'Tales Of Trees' is indeed tales about trees, but perhaps not first and foremost in a botanical sense," says vocalist and bassist Grutle Kjellson. "Trees can grow, shine, and flourish, but they can also wither and burn. They need to be tended to and looked after in one way or another, and thus serve as a fitting parallel to the human mind, let alone humanity as a whole." He points out that trees have stood for something larger than themselves right through mythology and folklore, which is familiar ground for a band that has spent three decades reading Old Norse material as something other than costume.

Ivar Bjørnson approaches it from the writing side. "'Tales Of Trees' can be both a tribute to our wooden relatives on this planet — who have had rather a lot of patience with us — and a metaphor for so much more," the guitarist says. "The winding time signatures of folk music and the adventurous spirit of classic prog are natural ingredients in my songwriting, and they feel particularly at home here. There is something about our kinship with trees that is both deeply familiar and wonderfully strange: everyday encounters with something we barely understand."

"Mið" is Old Norse for centre, or middle, and the record is built around the idea of an axis — the origin, and how far the present moment reaches in every direction from it. It follows "Utgard" (2020) and "Heimdal" (2023), both of which dealt in rites of passage; this one stops at the point the passage starts from. "Solar Will" and "Spirit Helper", the latter featuring Blackfeet Nation elder Kevin Kicking Woman, preceded it.

Then the road. ENSLAVED go out across Europe in February 2027 co-headlining with Iceland's SÓLSTAFIR, with Norway's GAAHLS WYRD supporting — twenty-one nights from Berlin on February 4 to Brno on February 27.

"There is a kinship here that goes beyond a shared enthusiasm for questionable weather," the band said of their touring partners: "the belief that music should be allowed to find its own path, even when it refuses to explain where it is going." And on what the tour is for: "Making a record is one part of the adventure; discovering what happens to it when we meet you out there is another."

Tickets go on sale September 25 at 10 a.m. CEST via enslaved.no.

ENSLAVED and SÓLSTAFIR 2027 co-headline tour, with GAAHLS WYRD: