The renowned Norwegian avant-garde/experimental/psychedelic rock band Ulver came out with a new album in the end of January. Now Ulver is a band that doesn't usually end up disappointing me in any way. This particular album also packs some pretty fine psychedelic rock tracks, mixed with some interesting dark ambience and drone. Together with what can perhaps best be summed up with the term avant-garde.
The best track from this album for me is undoubtedly Cromagnosis, which essentially sounds like a mix of Aluk Todolo, Bushmans's Revenge and Goat. A pretty interesting psychedelic rock track that mixes pretty different patterns and genres, starting from experimental psychedelic black metal influences, moving to the avant-garde Norwegian psych forest of Bushman's Revenge, and ending up with afrobeat influenced psych of the Swedish greats Goat. A very interesting track indeed. The other tracks on this pretty long album all dwell in ambience which is pretty well exemplified by England's Hidden or The Spirits That Land Strength Are Invisible, while sometimes moving out to the avantgardish psych rock realm. As is the case with tracks like Glammer Hammer, Om Hanumate Namah or perhaps Moody Stix. Either way this album leans more towards ambience, rather than perhaps outright psych rock. Making it maybe a bit unbalanced towards the former, but still packing some extremely fine tracks like Cromagnosis.
All in all the new album from Ulver is pretty good, with some fine individual tracks, but as a whole it is perhaps a bit too long and dwells too much in ambience and sometimes perhaps a bit in the unoriginal psych rock realm. Then again tracks like Cromagnosis do the exact opposite and essentially kick ass. As do some more ambient tracks like the rather simple, but good Desert/Dawn.
Some useful links:
Bandcamp: https://ulver.bandcamp.com/album/atgclvlsscap
Discogs: https://www.discogs.com/artist/92973-Ulver
