Style: Rock, metal, trip hop, ambient, dark ambient, spoken word, EDM
Primary Emotions/Themes: The epic poem: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Thoughts: And so it came to pass that Ulver left the metal realm. They evolved beyond the confines of guitar driven music and embraced the digital world. This fourth opus from the band embraces every facet of music, acoustic, organic, inorganic, and synthetic. For what is a wolf if it does not evolve?
The Marriage of Heaven and hell is an epic poem by the late William Blake. He wrote what many consider to be one of the great works of the late romantic period. In this epic he writes about the good and evil of man and how they are both required for the earth to move forward. Ulver takes all the stanzas of the poem and puts them to music. This nearly two hour album is the result of those musical musings.
To say that this is a massive album is a bit of an understatement. This album is where Ulver planted their flag in the ground and declared themselves to be free of the confines of any genre. To evolve to where no band has gone before and to not be concerned with the troubles of lesser beings.
This album abandons nearly all tenants of metal. In fact the guitar is a lesser instrument here than one would expect. If anything the electronic element of the band is front and center, all other aspects are secondary.
The way that this manifests is strange an often difficult to listen to. Listen to Garm chant "fires of hell" for several minutes straight over off sounding chords is just one example of how strange the music can get. Sometimes the guitar and drums do take center stage, but those moments are more often used as a climax or a passing fancy rather than the main focus of the album.
Vocally Garm has gone back to his singing that was seen on Kveldssanger, that deep - slightly off key - baritone voice that is an acquired taste to many. At this point it's just what Ulver are. Garm is Ulver and Ulver is Garm, if you don't like one you won't like the other.
It took me many years to get my head around this album. I didn't like a lot of what the band was doing at the time, and so I would only listen to certain parts of the CD before turning it off completely. As the years have passed the album has grown on me, and now I view it as one of the stronger entries into their discography. Yet another evolution of this fascinating band.
(As a quick aside, the band picture for this one is the band dressed up in suits while sitting on a car. I don't know if that is them leaning into the rumors from Nattnes' or completely unrelated. I would like to think that it's them making fun of the rumors)
Written January 15th 2024
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