Customer Reviews

Themes From William Blake's: Marriage of Heaven

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Although urban & noirish, Ulver's music completely fits William Blake's centuries old mystical wanderings. Maybe it's because norse Black Metal bands in general have this mystical vibe, or maybe because Ulver's electronica influences (Coil, for example) have also a mystical vibe woven into them. The album has an erratic, disjointed feel to it. It's not a traditional pop album; the structures from each song aren't verse-chorus-verse and when they come close to that, they suffer some ugly twist. Some songs revolve around a single theme; others have 7 to 8 jarring shifts into bare 5 minutes of song length. It's to be listened in a whole. It's an electro-religious experience. Definitely not your than average pop party music. Which is, by the way, EXCELLENT. It's rare to hear that, nowadays; a band striving for the love of that kind of higher experience, of that kind of aesthetic freedom.

Also, this is a definitely a cerebral work. There's plenty room for emotion, but things here have clearly been VERY worked out. They probably had to work hard to fit Blake's words into their musical scope. Not all poetry of "Heaven & Hell" is catchy and singable, but they made their best effort to match the words to the music.

Despite some of it's flaws - mainly concerning being a "I'll-like-it-on-the-10th-hearing" type of record - it's a priceless effort. Consider that two years prior to this release Ulver put out "Nattens Madrigal" - The Madrigal of the Night - which is, by all conceivable means, their worst album! Also noteworthy are the production values. All instruments are loud & clear; they all blend smoothly in the mix. The post-production effects rival most electronica tinged rock by a mile, even some mainstream ones like Nine Inch Nails.

I also wouldn't know the standard to judge this. No, it's not Industrial Metal. They are more akin to the trailblazers Throbbing Gristle & Coil then modern standards Fear Factory, Marilyn Manson, Orgy & White Zombie. "Marriage" is subtle, chilly & slightly paranoid...definitely more European than American. It's not Heavy Metal either, although Metal elements show up here & there. "Plate 2" makes topical use of double bass drumming. "Plate 3" has doomish double-up guitar riffs. "Plate 4" has palm-muted start & stop power chords. "Plates 12-13" & "Plates 22 -24" use death metal-like single note riffing for extra ambience.

It makes extensive use of Electronica. Everything is electronically processed; vocals, drums, guitars, bass guitars & whatever else comes in the way. Even some drum n' bass stylings show up in tracks "Proverbs of Hell, Plates 7-10" & "Memorable Fancy, Plates 12-13". But no; they're not electronica either. This album doesn't fit confortably into any techno sub-genre. It's not Trip-Hop, House, Big Beat, Gabba, Trance, Downtempo, Synth-Pop, Jungle or whatever else is out there in technoland. At times it bears a close resemblance to mid-to-late 90's Ambient because of its brooding paranoia, but it's too schizoid to sustain a single mood too long.

Although his double album has enough potential to drive any metalhead away, it gained rave reviews form the genre's media. 10/10 points in Rock Hard (Denmark); 7/7 points and Album of the Month in Hammer Magazine (Denmark); Album of the Month in Terrorizer (U.K.); 15/15 in Deftone (Denmark); 15/15 in Legacy (Denmark); 10/10 in Psycho (Italy); 12/12 in Thrash'em All (Poland).

"Marriage" opened a lot of doors to Ulver. Taken form their own site, www.ulver.cjb.net:

"Ulver posters started appearing in everything from dumb smash box movies such as Senseless to the TV series Sopranos. The controversial director of the motion pictures Kids and Gummo, Harmony Korine, recently commented, alluding to The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: "There's a real lineage from a composer like Wagner to a band like Ulver". This confirms Ulver's outstanding status - a status that has resulted in proposals from world-class engineers for production of future albums, remix requests from other musicians, as well as invitations to multimedia projects."

Final words: be brave, and face the "Marriage of Heaven & Hell" mind altering experience!

My first thoughts upon listening to this album were: "this sucks, Bergtatt was 1000 times better. I buy albums to listen to music not hear a poetry reading..." I was ready to write this off as a dissapointing failure but then decided, what the hell, might as well listen to it again, this time with the lyric booklet. It all kinda started to make sense then, obviously the poem is central to the album, a key fact I neglected before. Reading the lyrics along with the album didn't automatically put this at the top of my favorite albums, but it did make me appreciate the expierience much more. Everyone else seems to have covered the good aspects of this album so I'll cover what wasn't so good about it. Problem 1: Garm is one of the best vocalists I've ever heard, and there lies the problem. Most of the time on this album all he does is talk, not sing. Problem 2: The music gets boring, I see what they're trying to do but they could've been a little less stoic about it. Those are the two major issues I have with this album. As long as your not expecting a masterpiece on the scale of their earlier albums and don't mind drawn out (what some would think of as boring) compositions than this album is for you.

The production is dense and electronically processed -- pulsating dark soundscapes full of subtle electronic beats and texture -- the imperial vocals of Garm eerily glide around the music's soaring black peaks -- fractured metal with slight gothic tones merging with a mystic ambiance -- uncanny female vocals spectrally carry haunting melodies -- but these elements are hardly distinct. Instead, they seem to overlap and consolidate into seamless, protean mix that can only really be labeled by inventing new words. The atmosphere is so thick is becomes a visible haze smeared across the vision. The invisible bridges between pounding industrial crashes and tranquil electronic beauty full of filters and effects are stunning and endlessly engaging. Even suspended passages that are little more than atmospheric noise are startlingly captivating and menacing. Ulver's intelligent use of harmonics and droning effects and layers takes what is already brilliant and bumps it up to one of the most well-crafted albums I have. There is an incredible attention to detail that makes the album enduring as a work of art to explore over the years. Best of all, Ulver captures a very powerful drama despite relying mostly on electronic instrumentation -- there is a distinct human element which keeps the album from sounding cold and mechanical. Powerful stuff. Plus, it's William Blake's poetry. Since the album's lyrics stem entirely from Blake's writing, the musical structure is a bit formless but Ulver still manages to assemble everything into a skillful progressive flow.

I'll probably just be parroting other reviewers with this, but they really have it nailed. _Themes..._ is a brilliant work of electronic music, easily one of the best I have heard.

I will do my best to describe this. First of all, the songs don't really have names, they just call them "Plate 1" through "Plate 27" even though there's only 19 tracks. The way they name tracks on this CD is the most confusing ever. No, those names on the back aren't the song titles, although they are part of some of them. And the songs aren't just the "plate numbers" either. Rather, the songs are the red text in the lyrics, like "Voice of the Devil Plate 4" and "Proverbs of Hell Plates 7-10". As you can see more than one "plate" is in a track sometimes. ANYWAYS...

There are certainly a LOT of lyrics, based on themes from William Blake's "The Marraige of Heaven and Hell," obviously. They are very interesting. Try to read them while listening, at least on a few songs. Sometimes it's hard to find where they are because you have no idea what track number is which song. Or you might get a headache because they're all in capital letters in huge blocks of text. I don't understand the lyrics that well but I think they are contradicting the bible or whatever, and some are quite thought-provoking.

There are so many genre's mixed, that they are all mixed together within one song, right on top of each other. For instance, Track 4 has a very peaceful, catchy acoustic guitar tune with garm's vocals and some female vocals (just talking) with a semi-electronic beat, then at the end it suddenly does a backflip into this wild Industrial/Metal/Electronic instrumental. It is easily one of my favorites.

There are so many kinds of vocals. Several songs are mainly carried by vocals with a nice tune in the background, usually a dark acoustic tune with a pulsing electronic beat sometimes. There are the many voices of Garm and there are some female vocalists. Sometimes there is just talking, sometimes it is whispering, sometimes normal singing, sometimes more harsh singing, sometimes a mix between talking and singing, sometimes electronically distorted or echoed vocals.

The first track is a nice industrial/metal feeling song kicked off with deep dark vocals and industrialized percussion. one of the best ones. Track 2 is atmospheric distorted guitars with female singing ending up in a cloud of ambience. Track 6 is a monsterous, agressive, experimental song constantly being mangled and twisted around.

Track 7 is easily my absolute favorite. It is very epic, but in a way you never would have thought you would describe as epic. What makes it is the progression and the amazing vocal melodies. It is somewhat aggressive but you can hardly say anything on this album is "heavy." It starts off quietly with a pulsing beat and soft mechanic voice for a while, then suddenly flips around into the main song with a bunch of industrial sounds. The "Chorus" it's building up to is the best part. I feel on top of the world when this song is playing. Garm's vocal melodies just totally make the song enjoyable, it's just the tone of his voice or the style of the singing -- I really can't explain it. But this song isn't just based on vocals, of course, the parts where he is talking are very upbeat and you will not be able to stop tapping your fingers. That's the best way I can describe it, I'm sure you know this isn't actually catchy pop music.

Throughout the rest of the first disc you'll find more experimental instrumentals and songs with strange mixtures or maybe similar to what I described already. and a LOT of lyrics. There are a lot of ambiant parts too that seem to stop songs when they don't seem to stop and interrupt them with a breath of quiet ambience.

Now for disc 2. I have recently got into Disc 2 a lot more. Before, I usually didn't even play it because my first few impressions weren't very good. Boy was that a mistake. Don't make that mistake. There are only 6 songs, and only the first one is kinda long, 11 minutes. The first 3 or so minutes are kind of monotonous, then Garm starts singing better and the background music gets more interesting and the song really gets some nice rhythm patterns and more shifting changes.

Track 2 is very short but has one of the coolest melodies on the cd. I really don't know how to explain it much more than that. I picture being in some kind of futuristic top-secret facility. Actually, this sounds more like the style of Silencing the Singing, quite ambient but musical. Track 3 and 4 are pretty good but i'm not gonna go in depth with them.

Track 5 is very ambient and probably the most interesting song on disc 2. If you have concentration you will notice so many different things happening in this song and could invision a million different things.

The last song has a really good pulsating beat. It adds some really interesting sounds then a really really cool guitar riff that repeats, and another guitar riff that is rediculously fast and crazy. The vocals here sound like he's some huge strong hulk guy directing an army. Actually, this is probably the most bizarre song on the entire album now that I think of it. Great way to end this masterpiece. It says it's 26 minutes but that's just to fool you, the music lasts only about 5 minutes and there's a very short, pointless bonus thing at the end.

On first listen, this cd will probably leave you in mass confusion. While you are listening the first time you will have no idea what will happen next. The songs don't really seem coherent but it is very fun because there is such a crazy mix of things happening one after another. Don't pass it up and give it a chance. It takes a long time to get used to because it's something you've heard nothing like before. Ulver is just so brilliant.

I will do my best to describe this. First of all, the songs don't really have names, they just call them "Plate 1" through "Plate 27" even though there's only 19 tracks. Maybe the titles on the back are the songs and they spread across several tracks even though 5 of 9 of them have the same name. It's kind of got me confused but that's not important.

There are certainly a LOT of lyrics, based on themes from William Blake's "The Marraige of Heaven and Hell," obviously. They are very interesting. Try to read them while listening, at least on a few songs. Sometimes it's hard to find where they are because the labels just put a lot together such as "Plates 7-10" so I won't name songs, i'll just name tracks. Or you might get a headache because they're all in capital letters in huge blocks of text.

There are so many genre's mixed, that they are all mixed together within one song, right on top of each other. For instance, Track 4 has a very peaceful acoustic guitar tune with garm's vocals and some female vocals (just talking) with a semi-electronic beat, then at the end it suddenly does a backflip into this wild Industrial/Metal/Electronic instrumental. It is easily one of my favorites.

There are so many kinds of vocals. Several songs are mainly carried by vocals with a nice tune in the background, usually a dark acoustic tune with a pulsing electronic beat. There are the many voices of Garm and there are some female vocalists. Sometimes there is just talking, sometimes it is whispering, sometimes normal singing, sometimes more harsh singing, sometimes a mix between talking and singing, sometimes electronically distorted or echoed vocals.

The first track is a nice industrial/metal feeling song kicked off with deep dark vocals and industrialized percussion. one of the best ones. Track 2 is atmospheric distorted guitars with female singing ending up in a cloud of ambience. Track 6 is a monsterous, agressive, experimental song constantly being mangled and twisted around.

Track 7 is easily my absolute favorite. It is very epic, but in a way you never would have thought you would describe as "epic." What makes it is the progression and the amazing vocal melodies. It is somewhat aggressive but you can hardly say anything on this album is "heavy." It starts off quietly with a pulsing beat and soft mechanic voice for a while, then suddenly flips around into the main song with a bunch of industrial sounds. The "Chorus" it's building up to is the best part. I feel on top of the world when this song is playing.

Throughout the rest of this you'll find more experimental instrumentals and songs with strange mixtures or maybe similar to what I described already. There are a lot of ambiant parts too that seem to stop songs when they don't seem to stop and interrupt them with a breath of quiet ambience.

On first listen, this cd will probably leave you in mass confusion. While you are listening the first time you will have no idea what will happen next. The songs don't really seem coherent but it is very fun because there is such a crazy mix of things happening one after another. Don't pass it up and give it a chance. It takes a long time to get used to because it's something you've heard nothing like before.

Expecting Bergtatt, or Nattens Madrigal? Or perhaps another Kveldssanger? Sorry, but you'll find none here. On the surface at least...

What Ulver presents us with in Themes... is an industrial/ambient/dark wave type of thing. Think heavy distorted bass and guitars, lots of synth and sound effects/samples, and drum machines. So what makes this different from other bands doing this sort of thing? That's easy... Garm, and Ulver.

First of all, Garm's vocals are totally amazing. He can be subtle and roving, but also beautifully operatic and powerful. He has no peer in the metal realm. The first track is a definite highlight in this respect. Beginning with heavy synth, bass and drums, Garm begins with a low baritone, then reaches higher, with some soaring harmony. The chorus is truly divine as the guitar comes crashing down, and Garm's vocals sail effortlessly above.

While the first track is the most immediately effective in it's brilliance, this is not to say the others are any less excellent. In fact, in this respect, Ulver have not changed at all. While the finished product of Themes... seems quite different from earlier works, the approach is very similar. It's very hard to put your finger on why Ulver's music works, but it does. Sure, the songwriting is intelligent and moving, but Ulver seem to offer something more than any other band. There is a subtlety to Ulver that is so infectious, and also indescribable.

If there is one problem with this album, it is the large gaps of silence. I have not actually bothered to do the math, but I have the sneaking suspicion that Ulver could have fit this onto a single CD. In itself, that is not the problem, but having large gaps of silence does have a detrimental effect on the album's 'flow'. In fact, having two CDs is quite distracting, as the album is really a singular entity, intended to be listened to at once in it's entirity. Changing the CDs halfway through is very annoying, as it totally disrupts the intellectual ecstasy you are bathed in.

In short, Themes... is one of the most amazing pieces of music I have had the privilege to hear, regardless of genre. Thought provoking (when was Blake not?) and incredibly moving (although not in an 'easy' way), Themes... is an essential work. Very highly recommended

This band delivers maybe the most interresting cd of the '90. They started as a Norwegian black metal band, but after finishing their trilogy to celibrate the Norwegian nature and culture (cd's Bergtatt, Kveldssanger and Nattens Madrigal) they started doing something really different; something they wanted to do. The mastermind of this band (Garm, Trickster G) was already making bizarre avantgarde rock with superband Arcturus (with members of Mayhem and Borknagar), and now he is heading to a direction even further towards bizarre, experimental and avantgarde music. This 2-cd delivers pop, rock and metal, elector, industrial, drum 'n bass, acoustic elements, gothic and atmosphere- a lot of atmosphere! Nobody has ever made something likt this: making bizarre rock mixes with drum ;n bass-rhythms for instance. The songs are exceptional and extremely good. garm is one of the best singers coming from the metalscene. He uses his dark, deep and bizarre voice to make this music even more special. But what makes this cd and band even more interresting, is that they've used the great work of British poet/ alchemist William Blake -The marriage of Heaven and Hell- as lyrics for their fantastic musical soundscapes. The music fits the lyrics perfectly, for Blake's work was dark, bizarre, a little occult and symbolic. Reading the "lyrics" while listening to the magnificent music is highly recommended! Then you will capture the atmosphere of thsi band even more. For me this is one of the most interresting cd's ever, for it gives us dark atmospheres, bizarre music, avantgarde-sounds, weird progressive stuff and lots more...

If you are here, more than likely you are a fan of Ulver. This being said, you must also at least have the idea that Ulver is uniquely artistic in their musical approach. From their early days, starting with 3 recordings each featuring extremely melodic black metal with tinges of neo-classical stylings with Bergtatt, to an extreme deviation of ultra low-fi kvlt true black metal with minimal melody with Nattens Madrigal, to the ultimate contrast of Norse folk-based classical with Kveldssanger, Ulver proved to be progressive geniuses even in the paradigm of Black metal. Then with Perdition City they had already abandoned black metal completely and gone for a darkly semi-ambient electronic style for a unique twist. Blood Inside is probably the best representation of their metamorphoses, turning their slightly more quiet presentation the other way around for a more up-front sound. My main point here is illustrating how incredibly different Ulver can be with each album, and I didn't even cover their movie soundtracks!

"Themes From William Blake's 'The Marriage Of Heaven and Hell'" is, in my humble opinion, the most difficult to digest. This is not being stated in a negative manner of course, hence my 4/5 rating. The concept of this double disc is that all of the lyrics are poetry being artistically sung/spoken over original music. The main problem here in getting to know this albums genius is that it is unfortunately easy to focus less on the music and more on the poetry, which is more often than not in a rhythmic spoken word style. This can prove to be sometimes distracting from the music, but ONLY if you let it! If you can focus less on the vocals and really absorb the music in the background you will hear some of the most inventive pieces of music to ever accompany such beauteous poetry.

If this is your first Ulver cd, be prepared to hear something different each track. The first disc starts out with a hauntingly dark industrial feel with somewhat of a marching quality that eventually segues to a rock feel. It is a great example of how Ulver takes guitars, keyboards, electronic/acoustic drums, various vocal styles and layers them in such a genius manner. Female vocals pop in every now and then for a nice change of pace to add some nice layering. Ambient soundscapes give an ominous feel here and there, and they even throw in some heavy rock slightly metal tinges in there. They occasionally revisit their folkish classical moods, but they do it in a way in which they bring those styles into contact with the new ones. And trust me, they do it with such seamless fluidity that fans of anything 'progressive' will look at their Tool, Dream Theater, and Yes cds and will be forced to redifine the definition of anything 'prog'... ESPECIALLY those who are fans of Ulver's old school black metal style as well as the new explorations.

What I like about this cd is you can tell that Ulver is NOT afraid to explore and experiment with whatever they wish, however they want to. This is an excellent cd. If you are looking for a general musical theme for this album, I don't think I could give one. Just check it out and see for yourself the true creative force that is Ulver.

I will not repeat the analysis given by others. I just wanted to say anyone interested in this disc should also buy a book of Blake's poetry with The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell; it's much easier to read than the lyrics printed in the CD booklet, and you'll get more poetical gems by this great poet.

This album is everything that any fan of experimental music would wish for. It is deep, provoking, and makes your mind expand without the need for any drugs. Simply put, this album will blow your mind and possibly leave you wondering what happened after the first time you listen. It took me a couple of listens to fully appreciate what Ulver had accomplished here, but once I absorbed the album, it was in my permanent list of timeless albums.

Do yourself a favor and at least listen to Plates 21-22 (disc 2, track 3) and you will be convinced this album is worth your time.

A must buy for any fan of rock, experimental, or metal music.