Zdrasvtoi tovarischi, I'd greet the International Proletariet Elvisarino Democratic Fair & Just People's Worker's Party in Ulver's native tongue of Norwegian (respectively from Norwegia) but unfortunately Northern European languages are like fruity vodka drinks or electronic music to me it's just... No. No! Never! Why the Hell would I do that?! Good God almighty, no!
Now before Ulver began their horrific descent into good music, critical acclaim, and successful careers, these oldboys were making some truly raw, passionate, borderline Nationalistic folk-influenced black metal (with a straight up folk album somewhere in there), and my absolute favorite from this era of their career has to be Nattens Madrigal - Aatte Hymne til Ulven i Manden (good shit man that only took a few minutes to type up properly).
Dawg... So sick...
Now Ulver's debut, which was a FANTASTIC album absolutely loved it, was for pussies. Clean vocals, only five songs, cute little folksy guitar interludes, like dude c'mon get teh fuck outta here. Within TWENTY FUCKING SECONDS of this shit you can sit back, relax, and say to yourself "oh yeah, this is where it's at". There's still an acoustic section here and there in this album but like honestly dude just download their second album Kveldsangger or some Agalloch albums if you really want to hear that stuff. You won't be downloading it here that's for damn sure, the day I start posting acoustic metal on $$Chiang_Mai_Elvis$$ is the day I convert to polytheism. Yea fuckin right. I mean, one day maybe... Never know.
I like to dive into certain elements that I come to love out of certain albums, be it the lyrics or the aesthetic or the emotions evoked from the album's sound or presence in history, but the thing about black metal is that it's kinda like pornography; it just insists upon itself in existing. The first half of the album is what you'd come to expect of black metal music, just pure fuckin evil and viciousness in the recording. The sound is pretty raw, don't recommend listening to it on anything higher than 50% volume. The second half of the LP is where things get a little more interesting to me, where the chord progressions become more "uplifting" in their melodic movement. Take Hymns VI, VII, and VIII; these wouldn't feel too out of place on some American blackgaze album from the 2010's if not for the fact that they don't sound like utter piss and have lyrics with some fuckin balls to em (yeah btw readers Wolves in the Throne Room blogpost coming NEVER). All seriousness though, there's a lot more to black metal than the typical evil lyrics of babykilling and the raping of mortal souls and there's a lot more to Ulver than the scope of black metal in the 90's.
Regardless of how much you or I come to love or hate this album as the passage of time molds our minds to better acclimate to our conditions, I can safely say that this will always be my favorite album to allegedly had its funds used to purchase drugs, Corvettes, and Armani suits.
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