Line #23 Music/Ulver


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ulver_22.jpg]]
2	->''"Ulver is obviously not a black metal band and does not wish to be stigmatized as such. We acknowledge the relation of part I & III of the Trilogie (Bergtatt & Nattens Madrigal) to this culture, but stress that these endeavours were written as stepping stones rather than conclusions. We are proud of our former instincts, but wish to liken our association with said genre to that of the snake with Eve. An incentive to further frolic only. If this discourages you in any way, please have the courtesy to refrain from voicing superficial remarks regarding our music and/or personae. '''We are as unknown to you as we always were'''."''
3	-->-- '''Ulver''', 1999
4
5	Ulver is an experimental Norwegian music group formed in 1993, fronted by Krystoffer Rygg. The band has gone through numerous style changes, so much so that each "major" release is considered to be a different genre altogether, many times defying contemporary classification.
6
7	A quick rundown of their major releases:
8	* 1994 - ''Bergtatt - Et eeventyr i 5 capitler''[[note]]lit: Spellbound - A fairytale in 5 chapters[[/note]] (BlackMetal, FolkMetal)
9	* 1995 - ''Kveldssanger''[[note]]lit: Twilight Songs[[/note]] (Neofolk)
10	* 1997 - ''Nattens madrigal - Aatte hymne til ulven i manden''[[note]]lit: Madrigal of the Night - 8 hymns to the wolf in man[[/note]] (Raw BlackMetal)
11	* 1998 - ''Themes from Creator/WilliamBlake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'' (IndustrialMetal, ProgressiveMetal, [[{{Ambient}} Dark Ambient]])
12	** Commonly Shortened to "The Blake Album"
13	* 2000 - ''Perdition City: Music to an Interior Film'' (Trip-Hop, Electronica)
14	* 2002 - ''Teachings in Silence'' (Electronica, [[{{Ambient}} Dark Ambient]]; anthology of material released in 2001 across the [=EPs=] ''Silence Teaches You How to Sing'' and ''Silencing the Singing'')
15	* 2002 - ''Lyckantropen Themes'' (Electronica, Dark Ambient)
16	* 2003 - ''Svidd neger'' (Electronica, Dark Ambient)
17	* 2005 - ''Blood Inside'' ([[AvantGardeMusic Avant-Garde]], Electronica)
18	* 2007 - ''Shadows of the Sun'' ([[{{Ambient}} Dark Ambient]])
19	** This release is often mislabeled as being Electronica as well, despite that almost all of the instruments are the real deal (including the strings), and there is very little sampling at all.
20	* 2011 - ''Wars of the Roses'' ([[AvantGardeMusic Avant-Garde]], ProgressiveRock)
21	* 2012 - ''Childhood's End: Lost & Found from the Age of Aquarius'' (PsychedelicRock, CoverAlbum)
22	* 2013 - ''Messe I.X-VI.X'' (Modern Classical, [[{{Ambient}} Dark Ambient]], ProgressiveRock, PostRock)
23	* 2014 - ''Terrestrials'' (collaboration with Music/SunnO; [[{{Ambient}} Dark Ambient]], Drone)
24	* 2016 - ''ATGCLVLSSCAP'' ([[AvantGardeMusic Avant-Garde]], [[{{Ambient}} Dark Ambient]], PostRock, ProgressiveRock, PsychedelicRock, Electronica)
25	* 2016 - ''Riverhead'' ([[{{Ambient}} Dark Ambient]])
26	* 2017 - ''The Assassination of Julius Caesar'' (SynthPop)
27	* 2019 - ''Drone Activity'' (Dark Ambient, Drone)
28	* 2020 - ''Flowers of Evil'' (SynthPop)
29	----
30
31	!! This artist provides examples of:
32
33	* AsTheGoodBookSays: As one might infer from the title, "Ecclesiastes (A Vernal Catnap)" derives a significant portion of its lyrics from the Literature/BookOfEcclesiastes.
34	* AudioAdaptation:
35	** The [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin namesake]] of The Blake Album is used in its entirety as the lyrics to the album, and the music is derived from its themes.
36	** The lyrics of "Vowels" are taken from a poem by Christian Bök, published in his 2002 book ''Eunoia''.
37	** The lyrics of "Christmas" are derived from a 1922 poem of the same name by Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa.
38	** "Ecclesiastes (A Vernal Catnap)", as mentioned above.
39	* BilingualBonus: The first three albums are sung almost entirely in an archaic form of Danish (note that modern Norwegian evolved from Danish), with occasional digressions on one of the albums into modern Norwegian. A track on their remix album, ''1st Decade in the Machines'', contains a conversation entirely in German. "Ecclesiastes (A Vernal Catnap)" contains a spoken-word section in Norwegian. Not to mention their very name is Norwegian for "wolves".
40	** "We Are the Dead" contains the phrase "Wir sind die Toten", which is the song title in German. (The title may also be a LiteraryAllusionTitle to Creator/GeorgeOrwell's ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'', in which this phrase appears verbatim several times, though this is not confirmed.)
41	* {{Bookends}}: "What Happened?", the last song on ''Shadows of the Sun'', has an instrumental outro that is very similar to the ending of "Eos", the first song on the album.
42	* BreatherEpisode: "Een stemme locker", a tranquil folk track on the black metal ''Bergtatt.''
43	* ConceptAlbum: They have at least ''five'':
44	** ''Bergtatt'' is inspired by Norwegian folklore about trolls taking maidens into the mountains.
45	** ''Nattens madrigal'' tells a story about lycanthropy (as the subtitle suggests).
46	** ''The Blake Album'', as mentioned under AudioAdaptation above.
47	** ''Perdition City'' is meant to be "Music to an Interior Film", as it says on the cover.
48	** ''Childhood's End'' has a loose concept about the cultural loss of innocence that occurred in the 1960s, which the band tried to express through the songs they selected for the album.
49	** Finally, ''The Assassination of Julius Caesar'', as (again) no doubt suggested by its title, is a loose one centring around ancient Rome.
50	* CoverAlbum: ''Childhood's End'' consists of covers of various psychedelic rock songs from TheSixties.
51	* CoverVersion: The band covered Music/BlackSabbath's "Solitude" on ''Shadows of the Sun'' and Music/{{Prince}}'s "Thieves" for a tribute album. Furthermore, ''[[CoverAlbum Childhood's End]]'' consists entirely of covers of material from the late sixties, mostly quite obscure (Music/JeffersonAirplane's "Today" is by far the best known song covered).
52	* DarkerAndEdgier: ''Nattens madrigal'' is this to both Ulver's previous work and to much of the BlackMetal at the time. It [[PlayingWithATrope plays with the trope]], however, in that it's still a tremendously melodic album; it's mainly the thoroughly abrasive production and liberal use of CarefulWithThatAxe that make it a difficult listen for newcomers.
53	* DownerEnding: ''Bergtatt'' ends with the trolls imprisoning the main character in their mountain kingdom forever. Possibly subverted by the [[TheStinger minute or so of uplifting folk music following a lengthy pause after the closing track.]]
54	* EarlyBirdCameo: Jørn Henrik Sværen wrote lyrics for three of the songs on ''Vargnatt''. He has been an official member of the band since 2000. (Interestingly, one of those tracks, "Tragediens trone", later had its lyrics translated to English for the musically unrelated Music/{{Arcturus}} song "The Throne of Tragedy".)
55	* EitherOrTitle: "Porn Piece (or The Scars of Cold Kisses)".
56	* EpicRocking: Quite a few songs. Perhaps the best examples are "Silence Teaches You How to Sing" from the EP of the same name (the band's longest composition at just over twenty-four minutes in length), every song on its companion EP ''Silencing the Singing,'' "Ulvsblakk" from ''Kveldssanger,'' "Proverbs of Hell, Plates 7-10" and "A Memorable Fancy, Plates 17-20" from the Blake album, "Providence" and "Stone Angels" from ''Wars of the Roses,'' most of ''Bergtatt,'' and about half of ''Perdition City,'' ''Messe I.X-VI.X,'' and ''ATGCLVLSSCAP.'' ''Terrestrials'' and ''Drone Activity'' consist exclusively of this too, although not so much the rocking part. (''Drone Activity'' contains the band's second longest song, "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea", which is nearly twenty-two minutes long, and its ''shortest'' track is still nearly sixteen minutes long.)
57	* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: ''Nattens madrigal'''s full title translates to "The Madrigal of the Night - Eight Hymns to the Wolf in Man," and its eight songs, numbered "Hymn I" through "Hymn VIII," in a ConceptAlbum about... well...
58	* FadingIntoTheNextSong: The compositions on ''ATGCLVLSSCAP'' do this a lot. Generally the only gaps in the first half of the album are for LP side breaks. There are more gaps in the second half of the album. Their film soundtracks also mostly use either this or SiameseTwinSongs for transitions between songs, and there's a fair amount of this on ''The Assassination of Julius Caesar'' as well.
59	* ForeignLanguageTitle: They have quite a few in quite a few languages. Disregarding their early black metal albums, which are mostly in archaic Danish, we have:
60	** German: "Der Alte", literally meaning "The Old", and more practically translated as "The Old Man".
61	** Greek: "Gnosis" ("Γνώσης"), meaning "knowledge"; "Catalept" ("Κατάλεπτ"), meaning "falling"; "Eos" ("Έως"), meaning "until". Also, "Ecclesiastes (A Vernal Catnap)" refers to a book of the Bible/Tanakh, but according to Website/{{Wikipedia}}, in Greek the word ("Ἐκκλησιαστής") means roughly "one who convenes or addresses an assembly". Finally, "Cromagnosis" looks like a word of Greek origin (in the Greek alphabet it could be written as either "Κρομαγνωσης" or "Χρομαγνωσης"), but there don't appear to be any cases of it being used as a single word in Greek script; it may be a pun invented by the band, and it appears to be intended to mean something like "Colour of Knowledge" or "Cry of Knowledge", depending upon which spelling was intended ("χρώμα" matches with "colour"). The band may also have intended a pun on the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cro-Magnon Cro-Magnons]], the earliest known humans.
62	** Hindi: "Om Hanumate namah" ("ॐ हनुमते नमः"), apparently meaning "Om, All Glory to Hanuman".
63	** Italian: "Ante andante", literally meaning "Before Walking". (This also works in Spanish, but since "andante" is a commonly used musical term of Italian origin, it's likely the band meant it to be Italian.)
64	** Latin: "Somnam", meaning "dream"; "Funebre", meaning "funereal"; "Angelus novus", meaning "New Angel". Finally, ''Sic transit gloria mundi'' means ''Thus Passes the Glory of the World''; the usage of Latin here is appropriate given that it's a companion EP to the Roman-themed ''The Assassination of Julius Caesar'', as is the title itself.
65	** Spanish: "Noche oscura del alma", meaning "Dark Night of the Soul".
66	* FracturedFairyTale: ''Bergtatt'' tells a FairyTale type story based on old Norwegian folk legends about trolls kidnapping young maidens.
67	* FunWithAcronyms: The title of ''ATGCLVLSSCAP'' refers to the constellations on the ecliptic line in their respective order, starting from the vernal equinox. [[note]] Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces [[/note]] They also happen to be the signs of the Zodiac.
68	* GenreRoulette: One of music's most extreme practitioners of this trope, frequently switching between genres that have basically ''no'' relation to each other whatsoever. Broadly speaking though, most of their albums since turning away from black metal have been some variety of electronic music, be it the jazzy, noir TripHop sound of ''Perdition City'', the drones of ''ATGCLVLSSCAP'', or the SynthPop of ''The Assassination of Julius Caesar''. That doesn't encompass all of their albums, however, with outliers like ''Childhood's End'' being psychedelic rock or ''Messe I.X - VI.X'' being neoclassical.
69	* GenreShift: As demonstrated above.
70	* HorribleHistoryMetal: ''The Assassination of Julius Caesar'' is Horrible History SynthPop. The opening track "Nemoralia" is about an ancient Roman religious festival and mentions Nero's burnings of Christians, "Transverberation" is about the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II, and "1969" contains a series of references to events that happened in that year, such as the Moon Landing and the film ''Film/RosemarysBaby''.
71	* {{Improv}}: The compositions on ''ATGCLVLSSCAP'' were constructed over live recordings of improvisations the band did from twelve shows. They're far from typical improv fare, though, as the band has composed tightly structured pieces over them. Naturally, some of the band's live performances have played this trope straighter. Despite some of the material having been recorded live, ''ATGCLVLSSCAP'' is considered a studio album due to the large amounts of studio overdubbing.
72	* {{Instrumentals}}: ''Teachings in Silence'', ''Messe I.X-VI.X'', ''Terrestrials'', and ''ATGCLVLSSCAP'' are mostly instrumental, as is about half of ''Perdition City''. ''Lyckantropen Themes'', ''Svidd neger'', ''Riverhead'', and their contributions to ''Uno'' also fit, being film soundtracks. They're not the band's only examples either.
73	* LastNoteNightmare: The last few tracks on ''1st Decade in the Machines'' are heavier and more terrifying than anything else the band released.
74	* LighterAndSofter: ''Kveldssanger'' and nearly anything they released after ''Nattens madrigal''. ''1st Decade in the Machines'' subverts it by initially being this trope, but eventually becoming heavier than anything the band did during their metal phase. (Hiring Music/{{Merzbow}} to remix your material will usually have that effect.)
75	* LiteraryAllusionTitle:
76	** "Østenfor sol og vestenfor maane" ("East of the Sun and West of the Moon") is named after a [[Literature/EastOfTheSunAndWestOfTheMoon Norwegian fairy tale]] first collected by Creator/AsbjornsenAndMoe.
77	** "Noche oscuro del alma" is named after a poem by the 16th-century Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross.
78	** "We Are the Dead" may or may not be titled after ArcWords from Creator/GeorgeOrwell's ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour''.
79	** "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" is named after the [[Literature/TwentyThousandLeaguesUnderTheSea novel of the same name]] by Creator/JulesVerne.
80	* LiveAlbum: ''The Norwegian National Opera'' (Recorded at... well... guess) and ''Live at Roadburn'' provide two different takes on the trope, with the former presenting mostly reinterpretations of the band's old material, while the latter provides live renditions of ''Childhood's End'' material and one closing improvisation.
81	* LoudnessWar:
82	** ''Nattens madrigal'' has a [=ReplayGain=] value of -16.22 dB, which indicates a gigantic amount of volume compression (especially considering that there are probably five minutes' worth of ambient passages between the tracks dragging the values down somewhat). This was likely a deliberate aesthetic choice to make the album's production even colder. To their credit, the band took care to avoid any clipping when mastering it, and most of their other albums are mastered at more reasonable levels. Additionally, the remaster of ''Nattens'' on ''Trolsk sortmetall'' (supervised by Krystoffer Rygg himself) averts this; it's over six decibels quieter and comes in at [=DR7=] instead of [=DR3=]. Unfortunately, the version of ''Bergtatt'' on the same release is louder than the original (though not painfully so). The vinyl editions, as is usual with Century Media, are more dynamic and were likely given separate masters, with all albums in the set falling in the [=DR10-DR12=] range.
83	** As for their other releases, many of the tracks on ''1st Decade in the Machines'' are badly affected, but since all but one of them were remixes by other groups, this probably isn't Ulver's fault. Their other badly affected full-length releases are ''Blood Inside'', which actually does clip in some parts, and ''The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'', which tends to be quite loud. The [=EPs=] ''Metamorphosis'' and ''A Quick Fix of Melancholy'' are also affected throughout (except on the last track of the former), though not particularly badly by modern standards. Most other releases are only badly affected on one or two tracks, and ''Shadows of the Sun'' and ''Terrestrials'' aren't affected at all. The other releases do sometimes clip, but still have good dynamic range overall (''ATGCLVLSSCAP'', for example, comes out to an average range of [=DR8=], with only one of its twelve tracks, "Glammer Hammer", being under [=DR7=]).
84	** ''The Assassination of Julius Caesar'' clips a bit, though it's far from the worst example out there.
85	* LyricalDissonance: "Nemoralia" is a beautiful synth pop song that's primarily about an ancient Roman festival, but also includes lyrics of Nero burning Christians alive sung in the same blissful tone as the rest of the song.
86	* MinisculeRocking: "Ord" from ''Kveldssanger'' is a mere 18 seconds long, while "Fuck Fast", "Sick Soliloquy", and "Poltermagda" from the ''Svidd neger'' soundtrack are 20, 21, and 28, respectively. Some of the other songs are pretty short as well. (Note that the ''Svidd neger'' soundtrack is mostly connected through SiameseTwinSongs and FadingIntoTheNextSong, so these could be considered very short movements of a longer piece rather than very short songs).
87	* NewSoundAlbum: Basically, AllOfThem.
88	* NobodyLovesTheBassist: The bass is nearly inaudible on the original version of ''Nattens madrigal''. The remaster included with ''Trolsk sortmetall'' fixes this, as well as the LoudnessWar issues.
89	* OurWerewolvesAreDifferent: The subject of ''Nattens madrigal'', if the subtitle didn't make that obvious.
90	* SpiritualAntithesis: Almost certainly unintentional, but ''Childhood's End'' can be seen as one to the album ''Stars on ESP'' by experimental dream pop group Music/HisNameIsAlive. Both are {{Genre Throwback}}s to the music of the 1960's with a theme of lost innocence made by GenreBusting musical collectives, but their approaches to this concept are quite different from each other. ''Childhood's End'' is a CoverAlbum with a focus on hard rock and psychedelic rock featuring exclusively male vocals that focuses on the "loss of innocence" theme in a very abstract way, using its song choices to convey the idea of a collective, societal loss of innocence. ''Stars on ESP'', meanwhile, is an album of original songs with a focus on BaroquePop, folk, and soft rock, drawing heavy influence from Music/TheBeachBoys in particular, which features exclusively female vocals. It also has a more personal, nostalgic atmosphere, with a strong theme of GrowingUpSucks, and has a more unified feel due to its use of RecurringRiff and FadingIntoTheNextSong.
91	* PopStarComposer: They scored the films ''Lyckantropen'', ''Svidd neger'', and ''Riverhead'' in their entirety, and contributed additional songs to the soundtrack of the film ''Uno.''
92	* PrecisionFStrike: In "For the Love of God" and "Norwegian Gothic", as well as the song title "Fuck Fast".
93	* PunBasedTitle:
94	** "Bored of Canada", a play on Music/BoardsOfCanada.
95	** "The Future Sound of Music" is probably a mash-up of the electronic duo The Future Sound of London and the musical ''Theatre/TheSoundOfMusic''.
96	* QuestioningTitle: "Darling, Didn't We Kill You?", "What Happened?"
97	* RearrangeTheSong:
98	** They were planning to make an orchestral version of ''Nattens madrigal,'' but Garm revealed about ten years back that the project "[[DevelopmentHell is in a state of total dormancy]]" and little has been heard since.
99	** As for completed work, a few of the songs on ''ATGCLVLSSCAP'' rework previous compositions ("Nowhere (Sweet Sixteen)" is based off of "Nowhere / Catastrophe," for example).
100	** Additionally, there's the remix album ''1st Decade in the Machines'', which covers, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin as the title suggests]], the first decade of Ulver's career.
101	** Finally, the song "Eitttlane," as discussed below under SignificantAnagram, is a remix of "Nattleite."
102	* RippedFromTheHeadlines: The song title "As Syrians Pour In, Lebanon Grapples with Ghosts of a Bloody Past", which takes this trope up to eleven - it's an ''actual headline'', used verbatim.
103	* RockMeAmadeus: "It Is Not Sound" features a lengthy quotation from Music/JohannSebastianBach's Music/ToccataAndFugueInDMinor in its coda.
104	* RockMeAsmodeus: Played somewhat straight on ''Nattens madrigal.'' Mostly averted apart from that.
105	* {{Sampling}}: Used quite frequently on their electronic albums.
106	* SiameseTwinSongs: The songs on ''Nattens madrigal'' are connected seamlessly by a series of ambient interludes. This is also liberally used on their film scores alongside FadingIntoTheNextSong.
107	* SignificantAnagram: "Vowels" is an anagram of "wolves," and every single word of the lyrics contains only the letters of "wolves." "Eitttlane" is a re-imagining of "Nattleite," and its title is an anagram of the latter song's title.
108	* SongStyleShift: Perhaps most notably in "Rolling Stone". The first half is pretty straightforward (and catchy) SynthPop. The second half delves into [[AvantGardeMusic Avant-Garde]] ProgressiveRock, and it also employs a blast beat for most of its climax, which arguably makes it the closest Ulver have come to performing BlackMetal in over twenty years.
109	* SopranoAndGravel: Demonstrated in "Your Call," a good deal of ''The Blake Album,'' and several songs on ''Bergtatt.''
110	* SpokenWordInMusic: They have used this sometimes, like on the Blake album and on "Ecclesiastes (A Vernal Catnap)".
111	* TheStinger: After the final track of ''Bergtatt'' has finished fading out, there is a lengthy silence and then a hidden track consisting of uplifting, instrumental neofolk.
112	* SurprisinglyGentleSong: "I troldskog faren vild" and "Een stemme locker" from ''Bergtatt'' and "Trollskogen" from ''Vargnatt''. The latter two are {{folk\|Music}} songs without any electric instruments and the former contains only clean singing. After this point Ulver would vary their style too much for any of these changes to be considered surprising, although ''Terrestrials'' may be considered an example due to Music/SunnO's metal background and the absence of anything resembling metal on the album.
113	* TeenGenius: They were in high school when they made ''Bergtatt''.
114	* TropeCodifier: ''Bergtatt'' arguably started the subgenre of folk-influenced atmospheric black metal that later bands like Music/{{Agalloch}}, Music/{{Drudkh}}, and Music/{{Alcest}} would expand upon.
115	* UncommonTime: ''Vargnatt'' uses this liberally, with at least one appearance of the trope in every black metal song on the demo (specifically, there are at least three songs that use 7/4, one that uses 9/4, and one that uses 10/4). Later recordings don't use it as much, but "Operator" seems to be one example.
116	* UrbanLegends: The reason why ''Nattens madrigal'' is so under produced is either because they recorded the album in the woods at night or because they stole all the money their label gave them to buy Armani suits, cocaine, and a new car. WordOfGod dismissed the former as impossible but said the band did have rather expensive tastes when asked about the latter, though they also denied buying a new car, saying there wasn't enough money. (Note that black/folk metal band When Bitter Spring Sleeps ''did'' later record their albums in a forest, though; you can even hear the nature sounds on their recordings).

Context Music / Ulver