ULVER - Blood Inside

I hope the server isn't crushed by the avalanche of votes in this poll :/

So what's your choice then, JJ?

Today, it's "In The Red", because I'm in a Steroid Maximus kind of mood.

Which is coincidentally the track playing at this moment in time (In The Red, not anything by Steroid Maximus, which I will hopefully get at some point soon). Ah, and now we reach the sampled jazz breakdown, replete w/BM keyboard hum. :D

Favourite discovery I made TODAY about Blood Inside: "Operator" is just as mad awesome as all the other songs, where previously I thought it lagged behind somewhat. THAT BASSLINE OMG

If nobody else is gonna get enthusiastic then I will.

Best thing ABOUT each song:

Dressed In Black - piano chord at 3:31 followed by insane slow-burn breakdown, descending scales at end like some sort of divine judgement
For The Love Of God - the vocal harmonies
Christmas - the fact that just when you thought it couldn't be more kickass it suddenly is
Blinded By Blood - prototypes Shadows Of The Sun (and loses nothing in comparison)
It Is Not Sound - the video
The Truth - song changes time-signature INSIDE OPENING TWO SECONDS, hence TOTAL DISORIENTATION AND WONDER (also that vocal effect in the last section)
In The Red - the aforementioned 'sampled jazz breakdown' sounds like yr being sent back to the 1930s in batman's vacuum-cleaner
Last Call - at 3:24, over a minor-chord synth freakout we suddenly get some major-chord violin trilling. it works.
Operator - erm, THAT BASSLINE OMG, like some kind of mutant Sexy Boy

i voted 'christmas' for the pretty bells, the fearless and soaring vocals, and the 'one of these days'-alike outro

I voted Operator

the vocals on 'the blood inside' are often very reminiscent of the style encountered on 'the sham mirrors'. and yet, they seem to be a much more fitting accompaniment to the music on the former.

i'm listening to 'la masquerade infernale' now. i'd like this a lot more if garm didn't sound like he was auditioning for the part of javert in 'les miserables' in much of it. such an interest evolutional vocal trip this guy's been on.

Operator by a country mile.

'HOSPITAAAAAAL!'

^^^good to see a Cardiacs presence here! Pond-dwellers know next-level music when they hear it!

There may be a case for every song but in all honesty, this is between Dressed In Black, Christmas and The Truth. Fucking stunning, the three of them.

voted for Christmas

i'm listening to 'la masquerade infernale' now. i'd like this a lot more if garm didn't sound like he was auditioning for the part of javert in 'les miserables' in much of it. such an interest evolutional vocal trip this guy's been on.

On the money. I hate that album and it's mostly to do with the vocals. He sounds like some BDSM comic book shop worker trying to show his dark gothic side or something. Love the Sham Mirrors and The Blood Inside though.

What do people think of Sideshow Symphonies? I was disappointed when I first heard it. The production is fucking abominable. It sounds like the drums were played on a cheap drum machine stashed away in an oversized baked bean tin. Compared to the sheer aurora of Sham Mirrors it sounds very wishy washy. I gave it a cursory listen and filed it away. But now I've dug it out again, it's actually quite nice. Not particularly interesting, but fairly atmospheric. The new singer sounds dangerously similar in style to Garm's attempt on Masquerade Infernale, but is a lot more bearable.

I have all their albums on my computer but I haven't listened to them yet. I'll put aside some time at some point.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

i had a similar sort of delayed response to 'sideshow'. found it totally unremarkable at first, right down to the unflattering production (which you commented on) and the generally watered-down feel to the whole thing.

but, after i saw the band live just before they disbanded, i gave it another few spins and concluded that it doesn't sit too badly in the arcturus canon. 'deamonpainter', in particular, is a great song

I got this on vinyl!!!

herman, are you drunk dialing the search engine?

I don't drink. But I am bored.

Bored of ILM today anyway

haha, i'm impressed you don't drink. i wish i didn't (as much as i do)
nice to see such inspired use of the search engine. bummer hardly anyone voted in this poll. but i guess it's a fair representation of how many people on here have heard the record properly.

I got my lp in yesterday. So I thought I would revive this thread. It does deserve more.
When Louis returns he might do a Shadows Of The Sun poll?
Jeff just bought Blood Inside on cd actually so maybe he will be along soon with his thoughts.

I bet Louis is reading this wishing he could post :)

self-imposed exile for mr. jagger?
i was on holiday recently and missed the action.

but yeah, plenty more to be said about 'blood inside'. like how it's the most artful, genre-bending thing they ever did, with some of the most creative vocal lines. it's an ambitious record, but most of it works. i might have voted for 'blinded by blood' if i had another go at it.

'shadows of the sun' is an excellent release. i do wish they'd left off the sabbath cover, as it's more like a cover of cathedral's version of the same song, and thus sounds a little generic. everything else is stellar, really subtle, nicely restrained, and well-paced. the title track, in particular, is very moving.

Still thinking that I prefer Blood to Shadows, but they really are both great.

Yeah louis asked to be banned until his exams are over

It's dunny actually, over on DFFD, everyone prefers Shadows, yet on ILM, its Blood Inside is the fave.

Personally I'd rate Shadows and Blood Inside about equally. I find Blood Inside more creative and varied, and so maybe the better album, but I love Shadows' atmosphere and maybe have a bit more personal affection for it. They both rule!

It's hard to pick between the two really

Shadows Of The Sun possibly does edge it though. I think a lot of non metalhead ilxors would like Blood Inside/Shadows Of the Sun if they were exposed to it. Since there's barely any rock on it nevermind metal.

Bark Psychosis fans might like it for instance. maybe even Talk Talk.
Not saying they sound like those bands but fans of those bands might just dig Ulver.

i brought up talk talk in my decibel review of blood inside. and on ilm. it's that incomparable thing. tilt, laughing stock, blood inside. they go together even though they don't.

more talk here:

Ulver - s/d

why specifically 'laughing stock' and not 'spirit of eden'?

http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/8528/blood1za8.jpg

Still one of your favourite albums, Louis? You should try selling this band to ILM instead of Youthmovies and Oceansize.

this is still the best album of the 00's IMO

but Oceansize are miles better than ppl who've heard one of their early songs make 'em out to be; their new album is leagues ahead of their early stuff, really soulful, complex, original stuff, and not "deep, emo-fied post-rock" by even the widest stretch of the imagination.

I find Blood Inside more creative and varied, and so maybe the better album

this is my kinda assumption bro ;-)

The last Ulver album is even better than this one.

It isn't, not by a fucking street, but it's ok you think like that. :P

Shadows Of The Sun is still a very good record, don't get me wrong, but it isn't the fucking mindblowing, headspinning, clusterfucking, perception-altering, downright thrilling journey through musical psychosis that we have here.

But it is!

The songs are all of high quality but they don't set my pulse racing quite like Blood Inside's do. Something like "Like Music" is fucking masterful, chilling and brilliantly put-together, but ALL the songs on Blood Inside are like that, PLUS they're also sticking a load of aural dynamite under your ass and blowing you to kingdom come.

and doing it better on Shadows Of The Sun

C'mon then, what's your argument?

i agree pretty much. i didn't listen to shadows as much by a long shot. still great though. both of them. everything came together on blood inside. i wouldn't expect them to top it. but it would be great if they did!

oh man if they topped Blood Inside

Your Talk Talk - Walker - Ulver continuum is fairly apt, btw.

Anyway, more ILMers need to check both albums out.

my faavourite ulver records are still bergtatt and nattens madrigal

but i really like this one and also really appreciate the cohesive moodiness of the last one

I would probably advise people started with Shadows, to be fair. Most friends I play music to normally enjoy what they hear, until I slip a Blood Inside track on, then they go a bit weird and start to panic.

I listened to Nattens Madrigal all the way through and it was fucking superb, yeah, just not so much my thing as BI. Got all the records, need to digest more.

i'd almost go so far to say that nattens is my pick for greatest black metal record if it weren't for in the nightside eclipse. really gets to the core of what the whole genre is about

but yeah, listening to blood inside now and it's phenomenal

haha as am i bro

i think i will go to sleep tonight with nattens madrigal playing, and tomorrow i will give "in the nightside eclipse" a real good go, something i've denied it thus far

haha "go to sleep tonight with nattens madrigal playing"
i'm sure you'll be dreaming about dark norwegian forests and, um, wolves

and sonorous, bassy guitar tones

Still listen to Blood Inside more, Shadows still seems sort of naptimey to me, even though I really like it? Starting to get a little more of the underlying menace vibe from it on recent listens though which is making it much more interesting to me, so who knows where ill be in a few more months with it.

to the proper sort of listener, there really isn't a not-amazing ulver album, but it sure does take a while to convince them of that sometimes.

can't see anyone getting a shadows tat

http://www.monkeyhouse-recordings.co.uk/Other/Tattoo/Wrist001.jpg

Anyway, Nattens time.

Don't you just love whistly shrieky background fuzz? Night, ILM.

I bet he had nightmares

Whatever was going on, it was some pretty freaked-out shit.

lyrics on shadows ruined it for me. are they any better on blood inside?

They work well with the music. Much more confrontational and apocalyptic than on SOTS, they're also pleasantly abstract enough as to produce impression rather than awkward definition.

yeah, i did actually sort of notice the pedestrian lyrics on 'shadows...'. well it's obviously a mood piece, so i don't really mind that the lyrics are merely suggestive of something rather than outright poignant and cutting. the lyrics i think, are effective as a minor contributing force in establishing an overall premise, that is mostly captured in the creatively subtle ebbs and shifts in the music, as well as the uniformity in tone and feel of the record as a whole.

i've been really, totally digging 'shadows...' just recently. i never really envisaged it as an album that would one day kick me up the ass all of a sudden. i thought of it as an album i'd always have a heady, distant fondness for, admiring it more as a thematic, cohesive construct than something with individual moments of awe. but now i can really pick up on the peaks lurking within the songs themselves.

It's a really subtle record; the construction of the songs is ingenious, and there's SO much more going on than first meets the eye. I don't rate it as highly as BI, mostly because it isn't quite so blindingly expressive, so devastatingly visceral, but it's arguably as impressive an achievement.

Doesn't help SOTS that BI is still my album of the decade, either

Someone please help me decode this album. The production is not what I expected, on first listen. It sounds ghostly, understated. Like it was recorded in a cathedral or a graveyard, or both. Not sure what to make of the songs yet, either.

omg

I think the key is in the Bach Toccata & Fugue interpretation at the end of It Is Not Sound. Fragility of music. Interconnectedness. Music as gnostic lore. The truth is in the art. Think of it as a Bible reading in sound, aware of all cultures including the present one.

It is compact, but takes its sweet time. Never rushed, yet always rushing towards its next rhetorical anguish. It has a cumulative momentum and is very much of a piece.

It is ancient text, but it is forever downloading its own updates. Synthesisers. Post-production. Multiplicity of voices.

Take "Dressed In Black". It starts with two notes, sliding into each other. It builds, with instrumentation state-of-the-art AND traditional, until reaching a musical resolution midway through. It then continues into the abyss opened by this elegant synchronicity of timbres, this resolution. It grows steadily more insistent (while never quite chaotic), until it can grow no more, and then ends, showstoppingly, with a whole succession of careening, descending notes. The calm, untrue start has been usurped by a genuine musical force, a reality. It shakes the complacency from the very sound.

Think of the album as providing these unlikely resolutions, and using the fact that it has demonstrated these resolutions to be possible as a means to fully inhabit their space, to plunge deeper. To rip open the wormhole and then to fly fearlessly into it. This happens on almost every song. A matrix of multiplied voices based in timeless musical lore, that turns on itself and reveals truths that other bands cannot touch. Ulver do not merely read from the Bible, they translate and embellish it. They impose their own truth on the sounds given to them by others.

If it sounds ghostly, it is because Ulver are not interested in making it easy or obvious for you. Scott Seward said it best when he placed this record in the same bracket as Talk Talk's last two albums. In a slightly more manic, technologically-attuned way, Blood Inside is brethren with those most wondrous of records.

"It Is Not Sound" builds from, again, a harsh, modern, unplaceable electronic drone-noise into a fully-fleshed, accelerating composition, which after a linear and exhausting build (a real experience, a genuine discovery) finds resolution in one chord, which is itself the first chord of Bach's Toccata & Fugue. The musical wormhole opens, and a succession of increasingly space-age, alienating synths hammer out the lore of a different time. Ulver have built a terrifying truth and then they have embellished it with a quote. They have found truth and they have pressed deeper still. Everything is connected.

This is the most important record of our young millennium.

Sounds like I need to give this another listen, then. :)

Louis, compile a top 10 or 20 list of your fave albums from the 00's,90's, 80's ,70's and 60's and do a poll on each of them.
(then you could take the top 2 on each and have an overall poll at the end!)

You know you wanna do it.

That's a thought, although it'd be very self-centred and would draw attention not exclusively positive. Maybe if I become a notable critic, or something. Also, I am positive I have not heard enough 60's music to cover that decade adequately.

Anyone with an interest in music as art owes it to themselves to hear this record.

go on and do it. You know you want to.

It's a great idea, do it Country Matters!

Thirded.

He's too scared about what others might think.

No, I'm scared of seeming attention-seeking! I might post some lists here and see what the vibe is...

do a poll you coward, it's hardly attention seeking if you've been put up to it by at least 3 people.

at least if you do it there would be posts and votes. Ive been around a lot longer than you but i assure you,if I did it, id get you guys posting at the most.

lol i think your poll should just have two options: doom metal and long-form acid funk

;-)

i think you know fine well i listen to a lot of different stuff

Test Match Special

Did this poll ever happen?

I'm listening to Shadows now, and checking out some Ulver threads. Becoming one of my bigger recent discoveries

No it would have been too self-indulgent. I'm keen for an ILM-wide 00's poll. I'd be giving this album some points

It is remarkable how well Ulver has aged and also the cross-over appeal they had, especially compared to same-generation bands.
It's a slightly nostalgic remark, as I was also a massive Arcturus fanboy at the time, as well as into other cool Norwegian projects like Manes (Vilosophe is quite close to BI), In the Woods..., Solefald (and elsewhere, of course maudlin of the Well / Kayo Dot). At the time it was perfectly logical.
People complain about the vocals, but I think La Masquerade Infernale is an original blueprint for Garm's rock-electronic ambitions (just listen to the first two tracks), right before Themes (which blew my mind and has forever special status, and maybe their top eccentricity).

Anyway, 2 years before Blood Inside:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Gg8zAoeNmI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_-uvdAv0xw

I should give Themes from... another try one day, I used to have it and decided it was horribly incoherent and flabby compared to bands like Arcturus (who I still have a big soft spot for) but not as convincingly loopy as 666 International (ditto)

it is incoherent and flabby but it is also legitimately batshit. i don't like it so much but you can't deny it's unique

Incoherent I get, but flabby ? If anything, and despite all the interludes, it's very focused and they take themselves very much too seriously. It's like a strange and dark industrial rock opera mixed with ambient and folk. Maybe you mean linear. But many songs either hit pretty hard, are trance-like and/or feature monstrous basslines. The Argument, A Memorable Fancy 6-7, Proverbs of Hell, Plates 12-13, Memorable Fancy 17-20, plates 21-22, Memorable Fancy 22-24 and others immediately before or after (I just mentioned the whole album). And it sounds utterly deranged / out of this world. I like to think old Blake would have been pleased. And like, who does that ? The text is easily 20 pages. I've listened to the album so much that it just seems a cool addition that it's Blake.

is there any way to listen to Nattens Madrigal without giving yourself massive tinnitus afterwards

xps it's been a while since I've heard it tbf I just remember thinking of it that way. What I should do is try to re-evaluate all the stuff I didn't like back in the day and see if I feel any different now my tastes have changed a bit. I was never into anything between Nattens Madrigal and Blood Inside.

In answer to frogbs' question: not that I'm aware of...

Nattens is unlistenable of course, it's an army of jigsaws, but maybe at low volume on headphones.