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Rating: The wolf loses its fur and sometimes even its habits.
Year 1999: after the superb black metal trilogy, Garm, tired of growling fiercely through the gloomy woods of Norway, and increasingly aimed towards the uncharted territories of avant-garde that will characterize his original artistic path from this moment on, decides to sever all ties with an attitude and a way of conceiving and making music that evidently no longer belong to him.
The change is so radical and sudden that it cannot be defined as a true stylistic evolution; it is rather a clean break with the past, in which the essence and identity of the Norwegian combo inevitably become distorted. Of the old Ulver, in fact, only the name and the logo on the cover remain (later, even that will be eliminated!).
First point: away with the woods, studs, and spikes, and forward with jackets, ties, sunglasses, and limousines. These are the features of the new aesthetic dimension of the Norwegian formation, unthinkable until some time before. Second point: the production is powerful, crystalline, well-calibrated. In a word: perfect. At the opposite of the hissing, crackling guitars and imperceptible drums that characterized the previous "Nattens Madrigal" (a sonic imperfection that, however, constituted the ideal setting for the intentions proposed with that album).
Third point: the lineup undergoes a radical revolution. Naturally, besides Garm (who for the occasion transforms into Trickster G.), only the bass of Hugh Stephen James Mingay (who, like the singer, is also a member of fellow countrymen Arcturus) and the guitar of Havard Jorgensen are inherited from the past lineup (apologies if I will unceremoniously mangle Norwegian names without using appropriate characters, but my program does not allow for it, sorry). A key new entry is Tore Ylwizaker, the band's electronic mastermind, creator (alongside Garm) of most of the innovations present here, and a reference point for future Ulver. Between present and future, the presence of E. Lancelot on the skins and various contributions from Knut Magne Valle, guitarist of the aforementioned Arcturus, are worth noting.
Innovations certainly don't stop here: another sensational change is the abandonment of the Norwegian language (a choice that had characterized the band's past artistic production). The official language of Ulver thus becomes English. And what English, we might add: the words of "Themes from…" as the title itself suggests, are in fact directly plundered from the poem "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" (class of 1790) by the famous romantic poet William Blake.
The music, finally: following the path traced with Arcturus in "La Masquerade Infernale", good Garm decides to fully embrace the gothic and theatrical atmospheres that had characterized that masterpiece of metal avant-garde, further pushing its experimental attitude: the descent into Hell narrated by Blake's sublime verses, therefore, paradoxically marches to the pulse of electronic beats, speaks the language of hip-hop, and follows the unpredictable evolutions of the most hallucinatory avant-garde. What results is something completely different from what had been created until then, inside and outside metal, and if we must pinpoint comparisons, it can only be the grandeur of those same Arcturus from "La Masquerade Infernale" (a comparison quite understandable, given that three-sixths of the current lineup participated in it) and the monumentality of an album like "Fragile" by Nine Inch Nails.
Like Trent Reznor's work, "Themes from..." is also a double album, and in its nearly ninety minutes of total duration, the only clues that remind us of the old Ulver are the sporadic acoustic flashes (a testament to the folkloric component of times past) and Garm's superb vocal performance. Indeed, Garm's voice. Though the singer has always distinguished himself for extreme versatility, allowing him to smoothly transition from chilling screams to evocative and suggestive folk-tinged chants, now, with the former definitively abandoned, the versatility shifts to the axis of experimentation and sound manipulation across the board: from the usual dramatic tones to inevitable theatre of the absurd twists; from dark mephistopheles narrations to menacing filtered voices, and even to rapped verses, Garm doesn't seem willing to stop for anyone or anything. His performance is personal and truly difficult to define, and the only image that comes to mind is that of a hybrid between a mature David Bowie, an early Nick Cave, the most metropolitan Ice-T, and the James Hetfield of the "Black Album": oblique like the former, visionary like the second, frenzied like the third, powerful like the fourth.
As for the musical aspect, it must be said that the two volumes sit midway between the band's metallic past and the electronic future, which will already take over from the subsequent EP "Metamorphosis", culminating with the absolute masterpiece "Perdition City". The guitars, wisely modernized and light years away from the conventional insect-like black metal, continue to coexist massively with the electronic component, in the form of epic assaults, melodic interludes, and robust riffs, supported by solid drum lines, always precise and powerful.
Excellent is Skoll's dirty and hypnotic bass, always a creative bassist, now perfectly immersed in the new context and always ready to grind effective lines, whether it's dark nightmare trip-hop or the most dissonant industrial.
On the other side, we find Garm's own noisy incursions, Ylwizaker's samples and jazzy piano, jungle assaults called to animate an already dynamic and engaging journey.
What surprises most is the absolute unpredictability of the listening experience, following a labyrinthine pattern, articulated through scenes, visions, and crazy dialogues. Encounters with unlikely characters, desolate landscapes, and metaphysical musings, are recounted in a continuous alternation between more composite tracks (with unpredictable evolutions) and brief interludes.
In this regard, the contribution of Stine Grytoyr (or simply "Her"), whose singing, at times ethereal, at times narrated, at times akin to Björk, embellishes the various episodes, frequently stealing the scene from good Garm, who, as usual, loves to eclipse himself and leave space for his companions.
Finally noteworthy is the appearance of three luminaries of the Norwegian black metal scene in the concluding "Song of Liberty": Ihsahn and Samoth from Emperor and Fenriz directly from Darkthrone. Despite these three shady figures' "black" origins, speaking of black metal in Ulver's sphere continues to be prohibitive: even here, Garm and Tore's machine manages to bring everything back in line with the prevailing electro-industrial.
"Themes from..." is a superlative work, light years away from anything else released in the metal field, even where metal has chosen to transcend itself to reach new shores. While other bands have merely followed inclinations towards musical entities like Pink Floyd, King Crimson, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Sisters of Mercy, etc. (always the most popular non-metal listens in the metal world), Ulver courageously decides to draw from worlds totally foreign to metal and even rock: those of avant-garde, electronics, dark-industrial. But without completely yielding to the new directives and still maintaining a strong connection to the metal's word (consider the impressive eleven-minute ride that opens the second CD, or all the melodic interludes, with a clear classical stamp).
Furthermore, if usually the mere novelty of the medium constitutes a reason for amazement, or even an excuse to cry miracle, Ulver demonstrates such conviction in intentions (also thanks to an artist with an avant-garde background like Tore Ylwizaker, called to inject the necessary sensitivity and professionalism into the group to best face the challenge) that the experiments present in "Themes from..." never sound trivial or approximate common-place imitations, be it in electronics or avant-garde.
Ulver, rather, succeeds in the feat of crafting a unique album, revolutionary for metal, and has nothing to envy from dark industrial masters like Coil or Das Ich. And if there is indeed a weak point to highlight in this formally impeccable work with an unassailable conceptual rigor, it is the excessive length, which certainly doesn’t help an already challenging listening experience, especially where the experiments sound more precious and self-serving.
Indeed, at the end of the listen, there remains a bit of weariness and the impression that some parts could have easily been trimmed or somehow streamlined.
Between us, I don't think it's a sufficient reason to forgo such beauty and originality.
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