Enslaved @ House of Blues 5/6/9

I haven't listened to an Enslaved album since about 1998.  I think I may have saw them live at Milwaukee Metal Fest around that time, but I can't really remember.  If it weren't for this show, I might not have remembered this band ever existed. During the show, I kept thinking that the black metal scene has changed quite a bit since then, but it wasn't until the very last song of the 45-minute set that I realized what it was.  Sure, the corpse face paint is now gone, as are the bullet belts, chains and spikes (at least on stage - some in the crowd seem to be stuck in the '90s metal scene) - but that's not all that's changed.  I don't really keep up with metal at all any more, but I got to see (local band) Nachtmystium last winter at the Empty Bottle, and they were terrific. Enslaved seems to have just been past by. Their sound is a lot more polished, and their newer material is hardly black metal at all. And that's when it hit me. On their last song, they finally played something I recognized, and it was the stripped-down, treble-heavy, all screaming affair that coincides with what I grew up to know as black metal.  The rest of their set is some sort of black-metal hybrid that can't help but sound more commercial (as if anybody mainstream would buy this stuff).  It's not what "black metal" was meant to be. After all, the front man of Mayhem killed himself, in part, because he was starting to attract fans. Black metal has matured, and seems to have moved past the gothic stage show it once was and towards concentrating on the music itself, as it should be. Unfortunately, for Enslaved, this seems to have escaped their capabilities. I admit I haven't sampled much current black metal to get a sense of the scene today, but if Nachtmysitum is any example, there are bands representing the movement far better these days.