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Animals! Werewolves, once among the most influential of the black metal family, stray, strange birds.
Perdition City from year 2000 was ULVER's last proper album. KERRANG! ranking it top ten that year and writing: "This ain't rock'n roll. This is evolution on such a grand scale that most bands wouldn't even be able to wrap their tiny little minds around it."
A series of EPs and a couple of soundtracks followed. In 2003 ULVER marked their ten years of metamorphosis with a remix CD featuring household subversives such as Fennesz, Stars of the Lid, Third Eye Foundation and Merzbow. ULVER has been nominated to the Norwegian Grammy Awards, Spellemannsprisen, twice, in different categories. They have continued scoring motion pictures, most notably a joint soundtrack with singer/songwriter Tom McRae for the multiple award-winning Uno last year. Only Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter got more visits.
Their last release was the EP A Quick Fix of Melancholy. The band described the thing as chamber music for the fucked up. Some dude responded: "Ulver seems to have tapped into a musical vein that not many are aware of. This reminds me of The Nutcracker Suite type of holiday cartoons being thrust through the imagination of a mental patient at the local institution of your choice."
Nuts or not: ULVER is a tough crack.
"You could file it under spoken word, electronica, metal, pop, or art songs, and be right every time. It's Ulverific!" (The Village Voice)
Now BLOOD INSIDE. It's really very good. They did it themselves, and got away with a little help from legendary producer/mixer/artist Ronan Chris Murphy: King Crimson's preferred audio pilot and collaborator with ladies and gents such as Steve Morse (Deep Purple), Terry Bozzio (Frank Zappa), Tony Levin (Peter Gabriel, John Lennon, Pink Floyd), Joan LaBarbara (Philip Glass Ensemble, Steve Reich), as well as younger blood from Tool to Ministry.
ULVER is 33 years and counting backwards. They have the whole future behind them.
Just think about it. Would you have more kids with laptops unprepared for droning metal storms and featuring one of them Sonic Youth's covered by a perfectly bland art design out every day at Hippsville Records? Then go fuck yourself.
It is hard. We know. Very advanced. Very narcissistic. A bona fide blow in the head. Lights out.
ULVER is in the hospital. They are really sick. Operating in the red, making wrong calls, damn pranksters. And they have a lot of instruments. You must be patient.
Video: starring His Holiness John Paul II aka Trickster G. with spastic paralysis. Set design by Gustave Doré and Albrecht Dürer with the resurrected Kenneth Anger behind the camera.
We give you ULVER's BLOOD INSIDE. Certified and sanctified. For gods and dogs alike. The first 2000 in red velvet and numbered inside.
Due to reorganisation the boys are now stationed in a labyrinth outside Cairo. They are shifting shapes to come.
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