Norwegian progressive metal band Enslaved have released “Spirit Helper,” a deeply personal and cross-cultural collaboration with Kevin Kicking Woman, a tribal elder of the Blackfeet/Cree Nation in Montana.
Kevin Kicking Woman comments: “Songs are the Blackfoot way of knowing. Expressing relationship and responsibility, belonging and accountability. The purpose of this song is having the performative expression giving meaning to life. Connecting to the universes through the cosmos, earth beings, water beings and spirit beings. Spirit helper is the physical documentation in this process.”
Enslaved founding guitarist Ivar Bjørnson traces the origins of the collaboration back to 2019 in Colorado, where connections formed through the band’s extended musical community — including shared ties with Wardruna, their management, and the community surrounding the Fire in the Mountains festival on Blackfeet land in Montana — gradually led them toward the Blackfeet Nation. “What initially began as conversations around performances and artistic collaboration slowly evolved into something much deeper: an exchange of perspectives, histories, and spiritual traditions shaped by many people along the way,” he says.
Those connections deepened through By Norse Music — the label and artistic platform co-founded by members of Enslaved and Wardruna, together with manager Simon Füllemann — and came into sharper focus when Fire in the Mountains returned in 2025 to East Glacier, Mont. “We were welcomed into conversations and ceremonies that left a profound impact on us,” Bjørnson says. It was there that he met Nick Rink of the Blackfeet Nation, who later introduced him to Kevin Kicking Woman.
The pivotal moment arrived during a later gathering in New York, attended by representatives from the Blackfeet community, Fire in the Mountains, the Firekeeper Alliance, and Enslaved. There, Kevin Kicking Woman shared a traditional morning prayer song — a deeply personal and spiritual piece that he entrusted to Bjørnson and the band as the foundation for a new composition. “I immediately recognized the responsibility carried within that gesture,” Bjørnson says. “Rather than simply building around Kevin’s contribution, it became important for me to allow the music itself to adapt to the pulse, rhythm, and spirit already present within his song.” Over the following months, the two worked to find a musical language where their respective traditions could coexist — allowing Enslaved to remain fully itself while honoring the emotional core of Kevin’s prayer.
“For us, the song represents far more than a collaboration between artists from different backgrounds,” Bjørnson reflects. “It reflects what can happen when people meet openly, listen carefully, and allow themselves to be changed by the encounter. The generosity, trust, and wisdom shared with us by Kevin Kicking Woman, Nick Rink, the Blackfeet community, Fire in the Mountains, the Firekeeper Alliance, and everyone who helped shape this journey are things we carry with deep gratitude. Ultimately, ‘Spirit Helper’ is a song about connection — between past and present, traditions and people, and the spiritual and human worlds. For Enslaved, it stands as one of the most meaningful musical journeys we have undertaken.”
The artwork for “Spirit Helper” was created by Nicholas Rink, who describes it as a visual meditation on the forces behind the collaboration: a light blue wave at the bottom representing “the background vibration of existence connecting us all”; a red line representing shared humanity; a yellow spiral representing the song itself moving through all of those elements; and a black circle with a lightning bolt representing Kevin Kicking Woman’s singing and its spiritual power. The work is rendered on an old map of Norway, a nod to the importance of land in shaping human experience, with the rainbow of triangles paying homage to Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon.
Enslaved will return to Fire in the Mountains later this month to perform. Founded in 1991 by Bjørnson and vocalist Grutle Kjellson, the Bergen-based band released their debut demo “Yggdrasill” in 1992, the mini-album Hordanes Land in 1993, and their debut full-length, Vikingligr Veldi, in 1994. Over the three decades since, they have become one of Norway’s most celebrated and internationally recognized bands, widely known for their fusion of black metal and progressive rock.
Enslaved is Ivar Bjørnson on guitar, Grutle Kjellson on vocals, Arve “Ice Dale” Isdal on guitar, Håkon Vinje on keyboards and clean vocals, and Iver Sandøy on drums.
