Ulver - s/d

"nattens madrigal" is their most black metal release (almost a noise record), "bergtatt" is epic black metal stuff with folk melodies and clean vocals blended in and is really something i have to be in the mood for.

the recently issued cd which compiled the "silence teaches/silencing the singing" EPs would probably resonate with anyone who likes later labradford albums - it's ambience with a kind of mellowed out glitchiness to it and occasional beats; i think it's really pretty good (if not absolutely original). "lyckantropen themes" is similar, but more streamlined and electronic sounding and less developed (it's a soundtrack, thus kind of background).

"Themes from William Blake's The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell" is a double CD filled with overdramatic recitings of the book, Depeche Mode-style synthpop with some distorted guitars here and there. Not totally rubbish, but way too long and unintentionally funny. The later releases (basically Christopher Rygg solo) go into glitch-y Coil soundtrack-ish territory. Lots of people seem to love this material, I'm not really feeling it.

---

This caught my ear in the record store because I liked the paradoxical singing -- both forceful and wispy, also the peculiar sampling going on behind it -- the textures. And while it hasn't quite held up to my initial expectations, it is a very intriguing album and worth listening to again and again just to hear new things in it each time. It has metal's pretention, but shoegaze's texture. It's also got a huge dose of goth -- especially in the lyrics, but the keyboard player was obviously stolen from some defunct prog rock band. And then there's that lovely little gamelan interlude that tickles my ears at the beginning of the third song. Steve's probably thinking Talk Talk because there's a vibraphone in the fourth song, and where there is vibraphone, there will inevitably be Bark Psychosis comparisons. But to be honest, besides some of the pacing and a bit of the percussion, I can't here any Talk Talk here. The 80s band that I _am_ hearing loud and clear though is Ultravox. I think that's because of all the pomp and the bluster and the lyrics that feel like they need dry ice and an eastern bloc country as a backdrop.. But it's also in one of the voices : a sort of heavy-metal Midge Ure. Take a song like "Vienna" and add a bunch of prog keyboards and a bit of feedback and some Loop loops, then put the voice a bit lower in the mix so it sounds more whisper-y, but still confident. There, see what I mean?

Like most metal albums, the lyrics are both specific and broadly archetypal. And it's obvious to me that these folks are Tool/Perfect Circle fans, because they use the same sort of ironic wordplay that Maynard favors. Right down to some of the same themes :

"truth is a hospital
please be patient"

or, my personal favorite :

"is the vampire
in the mirror
eternal
like Hell"

(good use of line breaks there -- it adds layers of meanings)

ONe last thing I wanted to mention, the genius sampling and editing in the seventh song -- it starts out with an oppressive goth string arrangement that's also got a tiny bubble of vibraphone (?) beneath it for relief, and the lyrics are all about blood and death and ambulences and hospitals, which add to the tension. And then, just as the lyrics are winding up for the final punch, the tune suddenly morphs seamlessly into a 1930s style Big Band brass extravaganze (a la Mercury Rev). It's a brilliant musical shift, but it doesn't make "sense" lyrically, so that the listener's mind -- or at least my mind -- is left reeling from the disjoin. Wait a minute, we were in an ambulence rushing to the hospital -- how did we end up in a Busby Berkley film?! I think it's the first time I've ever felt that something was both SO RIGHT, and SO WRONG for a song simultaneously. I wonder if others felt this way too?

Also, hearing it all together accentuates the WTF-ness that Stripey wrote about. There are so many shifts in the pacing and musical style. Also, there's definitely a cabaret element happening here.

Ulver - Blood Inside [featured album]

http://www.metal-invader.com/db/modules.php?name=Reviews&rop=showcontent&id=1914

http://decibelmagazine.com/0905_ulver_bloo.aspx

(and i totally did the ...ON ACID! trick, but i don't care cuz you have to smack people around in order to make them buy something weird. or at least i do cuz i'm no good at being subtle. i heart hyperbole.)

look...

ULVER To Release 'Shadows Of The Sun' In The Fall
http://tinyurl.com/395fyp

the most recent ulver record i own is the marriage of heaven and hell thingie. i remember feeling a little cut that they'd turned their back completely on black metal. it's an entertaining release nonetheless, though i never felt compelled to listen to anything that came after it.

nattens madrigal is about as pure and glorious as black metal gets.

omg NEW ULVER

thanks, dj martian!

didn't know you were a fan, actually :)

This is exciting news. Anyone know if it's getting released on "The End" this time around?

i only have 'blood inside' but it's one of my very favourite records. when i decided to introduce my music-collection to my brother, it was the first album i urged him to play. he put it in the disc-drive without pressing it down and scratched it. :-/

i would think that it's the same, i.e Jester Records for Europe and The End Records for North America

i remember an ex-girlfriend did something similar with my copy of 'tea for the tillerman'. in fact, it was one of those players that you open and close with a button and it slides in and out. she didn't put the record in the slot properly and it got stuck when she pressed the button. scratched it so badly it wouldn't play...

but back to ulver,

i think...i think i should purchase 'blood inside'

LJ, you would probably like Teachings in Silence etc. although it's much darker/emptier. Might want to work your way into the earlier albums, they aren't likely to appeal to your sensibilities (as I understand them) right off the bat. Try to track down the quick fix of melancholy EP also, which you are almost certain to like if you like blood inside.

Of course, you don't like "Nail", so I'm not entirely sure what to think about you. Perhaps this will improve your score overall :)

xposts

hey dude, I LIKE nail, but i prefer the last two for some unfathomable reason! 'kreibabe' is one of the finest, most awesomely warped pieces of music i've ever heard, and the rest ain't far behind. i'm also a fan of more than a little metal, so i'd probably really enjoy the early stuff. would you say 'bergtatt' or 'nattens madrigal' would be a wiser foray?

also, cheers for the EP leads! :-D

i'd say bergtatt, because you get a cool hybrid of nordic folk and black metal with that one and it's a good intro to their black metal dynamic. nattens madrigal is an onslaught from start to finish. though honey to these ears

let's see what john says

i tend to prefer onslaughts too, mind

Well, if part of what you enjoy about Blood Inside is the lush production, nattens is going to be a bit of a shock. It's a fantastic by harshly recorded album (w/intent). I think I'd go with bergtatt. If you're like me, though, eventually you'll end up buying everything you can find.

i would suggest that the organic and primal production (or lack of production as it were) on nattens lends the record a really ambient quality. the playing is extremely tight as well. no one can doubt that it's an extremely focused record, despite its harsh sound.

great artwork in the sleeves too with some really artistic shots of the band

does it sound anything like (this will sound heretic but bear with me) Primal Scream's 'Accelerator'? that's the kind of harsh, distorted guitar kerfuffle i go crazy for.

the guitar in the ulver is not as loose and is more melodic than the primal scream.

accelerator is a cool track.

oh wait, i've just thought of a possible comparison. does it sound anything like serena-maneesh's 'beehiver II', 'don't come down here' or 'your blood in mine'?

I don't know that Primal Scream song.

xpost:Nor do I know those songs.

oh wait, I've got it. opening track off Sleater-Kinney's last album ('The Fox'). Do Ulver's guitars achieve that sort of lo-fi distorted glory?

I agree entirely.

Childhood's End was awesome.

i finally got around to ATGCLVLSSCAP and tbh a lot of it rules

the "glammer hammer"/"moody stix"/"cromagnosis" section especially

Everything Ulver does feels like a bad imitation of something they don't really "get." That goes for their black metal era too

ah

hyperbolic review here:
http://decibelmagazine.com/0905_ulver_bloo.aspx

(and i totally did the ...ON ACID! trick, but i don't care cuz you have to smack people around in order to make them buy something weird. or at least i do cuz i'm no good at being subtle. i heart hyperbole.)

― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, August 29, 2005 1:56 AM (eleven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and i totally got the "end of everything" thing from that ILM MBV thread from a while back.
― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, August 29, 2005 1:58 AM (eleven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

four months pass...
Blood Inside is something special - something else entirely!! My metal pals claim it isn't even metal, but it is. It's metal that's had all the metal "bits" taken out and replaced with everything else under the sun.
― Wogan Lenin (dog latin), Monday, January 9, 2006 2:21 PM (ten years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

one month passes...
It still ended up making a bunch of the metal polls, and a lot of metal people did like it a lot.
― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, February 11, 2006 3:24 AM (ten years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

of course it's metal. i dunno, i really appreciate it. i find that with all hard rock/metal/punk there seems to be a lot of people scared to deviate fromt he original flow.
― Vintage Latin (dog latin), Saturday, February 11, 2006 3:28 AM (ten years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

s/o good posts era, s/o no caps mafia

Everything Ulver does feels like a bad imitation of something they don't really "get." That goes for their black metal era too

I... kinda agree. About the more recent albums, anyway. I like the black metal stuff and the Silence/Singing EPs, but I've come to the realization that the proggy era just doesn't engage me like I wish it would, and there's this creeping feeling that it's because they just don't sound comfortable doing it. I want to like them! But even when they meet me halfway by doing a bunch of psych covers I'm just not feeling it.

it's really not true though. they take a lot of chances and they aren't afraid to fail. but they know what they're doing. the stuff that has worked has REALLY worked and they were totally inside it and made it tick. in troo black metal fashion, i honestly think don't think they give a fuck. there are definitely some past releases where it feels like you are listening to someone learn how to do something. but in a good way.

i haven't heard new stuff in a while though. i can't believe i wrote that blood inside review 11 years ago! we must all be really old now.

but i've also kinda always liked how fucked up and awkward they could be. they make a band like radiohead sound like rebecca of sunnybrook farm. that art opera blake thing they did is completely demented and really doesn't work in some ways at all and sounds like people in a gulag somewhere who had only read about art music and then approximated it in DIY fashion but who the hell else would make something like that? on the other hand, blood inside is near perfection if you ask me as an art-prog statement and still sounds great and stands completely apart and not at all awkward. i think that was their most successful work of art. but i've missed stuff.

i would buy the new one. didn't have much interest in the snooz-0)))) collaboration. kinda wish ulver had made an album with scott walker instead of those doofuses for maximum mindfuck.

I'll have to give them another shot sometime, I guess. Like I say I want to feel it! Maybe I need to go wild pitch and check out the William Blake thing, which I haven't heard.

i would buy the new one. didn't have much interest in the snooz-0)))) collaboration. kinda wish ulver had made an album with scott walker instead of those doofuses for maximum mindfuck.

― scott seward, Wednesday, September 21, 2016 2:36 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes!!

the new one is definitely worth checking out, but imo their best recording since blood inside really is the psych covers album

also I do like the spoken-word thing on wars of the roses

war of the roses was the last one I bought

plowing through some of their early stuff and holy shit, Nattens Madrigal is going to give me hearing loss

so can we talk about how this new record rocks? depeche mode is the obvious referent but it's coming at it from this weird angle that i love. jury's still out on which side it lands on of pastiche vs. homage, but the tunes are def there

it lands on the side of being awesome. i made a thread about it

found it

Not hearing what you're all hearing. Sounds like computer generated pastiche most of the time, with the distant clinical emptiness of Lansing-Dreisden. Guess I'll just have to try a few more times

https://ulver.bandcamp.com/album/drone-activity

posted elsewhere already?

i had no idea, omg

I've just picked up a few Ulver albums including the Drone Activity. Hadn't realised they'd released a new one

including the Drone Activity

https://thequietus.com/articles/28828-ulver-interview-3

A longish interview in the Quietus for their new album. It seems to be in the vein of "the Assassination...", which is exciting

Cover of new album:

https://www.normanrecords.com/artwork/medium/48/182048-ulver-flowers-of-evil.jpg

And it's out!

Yes, out today here. Looking forward to getting this.

It feels like he's easing into the sound introduced on the last album and letting himself have more fun with it.

Yes. Sounding good so far.

wow didn't know this was coming, sounding great so far.

weird comparison, but the heavy slow-building atmosphere of the first track 'one last dance' reminds me of blick bassy's 'ngwa,' which is one of my fav songs from last year

the singles didn't stand out to me ahead of time but I can already feel this working on me, I think it's the equal of the last one

To me it has fewer immediate hooks than The Assassination..., but I'm enjoying it and it will grow.

"hour of the wolf" confirmed amazing

actually this just keeps getting better as it goes

agreed with simon it's a more playful version of the sound on the last record... to a nigh-danceable degree on "apocalypse 1993"

when's the D. Lissvik rework album coming out

So far this isn't grabbing me, but I'll give it time. See you in a month!

I feel the need to plug the new Greg Puciato single for anyone who digs recent Ulver

https://youtu.be/VgCMGAvurl0

^^ good stuff

Yes, thanks Simon.

I'm enjoying the new one. Short and sweet. But it doesn't reach the highs of its predecessor. It's a more even listen, if that's the right way to put it. "Apocalypse 1993" might be my favourite for now.

Really like his voice. How many other death metallers secretly have voices like polished oak?

So far this isn't grabbing me, but I'll give it time. See you in a month!

― lukas, Friday, August 28, 2020 12:30 PM (ten months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Duke's correct that the highs aren't as high, but it's consistent and it scratches an itch nothing else does. Keep coming back to this.

https://thequietus.com/articles/30754-ulver-reinterpret-john-carpenter-new-album-scary-muzak

New Ulver. Looking forward to this.

https://ulver.bandcamp.com/album/hexahedron-live-at-henie-onstad-kunstsenter

Also this ^

It's really the first time in 15 years that it clicks, but today I was in the mood for relistening to Nattens Madrigal (in two sittings) and I find it actually much closer to Bergtatt than I thought (in composition).
Also had a blast relistening to Blood Inside. Come to think of it, one thing that unites a good part of their discography is how disconcerting and dense and visceral-cerebral and hypnotic their albums are.