Following the 1993 demo releases the demos Rehearsal 1993 and Vargnatt, which have a similar (albeit somewhat rawer) style, the band's first album, 1994's Bergtatt - Et eeventyr i 5 capitler, is a folk-themed black metal album. The title Bergtatt literally translates as “mountain-taken”, but is more commonly used to describe someone who is stricken with awe. In Norwegian folk tales the word refers to people who wander off into mountains, lured by trolls or other mythical beings. The narrative of the album’s lyrics follows a woman as she becomes so mountain-taken. The subtitle means “An Adventure in 5 Chapters”. Bergtatt features a melancholic, fully acoustical song “Een Stemme Locker” (“A Voice Beckons”).
1995's Kveldssanger, Ulver’s second album, contrasts with Bergtatt as it uses classical guitars, cello and chamber chants, and completely eschews the black-metal elements of Bergtatt, while still having a folk theme. Garm has since remarked that Kveldssanger was an “immature attempt at making a classical album.” He later clarified this by saying that the performance was immature, yet the content is strong when their youth is taken into account.
The third album, 1997's Nattens madrigal - Aatte hymne til ulven i manden, was a return to black metal, more ferocious than Bergtatt was, with only one mellow acoustic interlude in the first track. The album is intentionally under-produced, akin to Darkthrone's Transilvanian Hunger, with buzzing guitars and rather muffled drums. There are rumours surrounding this album and its recording, the most famous being that the band recorded this album in a forest. The band has dismissed this as impossible, although When Bitter Spring Sleeps later would record their albums in a forest. Another and less-known rumor is that the band purposely recorded the album on a four-track cassette recorder and used the money that Century Media gave them for other things, for example Armani suits, haircuts, cocaine, beer, and/or a new car. When questioned about this, Garm said the band did have rather expensive tastes, though he has denied buying a new car, saying there wasn't enough money.
Themes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, released in 1998, was different from what Ulver, or even any other band, had made before. Tore Ylwizaker, a new composer and sound architect, paired up with Garm's expanding artistic visions and together they stepped over the boundaries of black metal aesthetics, creating a genre-defying work. In this album, the musicians blended electronics, industrial music elements, progressive metal and avant-garde rock, adding ambient passages. Lyrically, the album incorporates the entire text of the William Blake's poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and features guest vocals. Despite confounding and perhaps alienating many fans of the band's first three albums, the album received widespread acclaim from critics within both the rock/metal and alternative music press. For instance, it was reviewed as 'album of the month' in several high-profile magazines such as Terrorizer, Metal Hammer, and Rock Hard. It also ranked very high at many year's best polls that same year.
Ulver's next two releases, the EP Metamorphosis and full-length album Perdition City: Music to an Interior Film, were even more experimental than the “Blake Album”, and a lot more pensive. The Metamorphosis disclaimer reads: “We are as unknown to you as we always were”. The band had moved further away from rock and metal and into a more ethereal style, much like that of Coil. The use of programmed sound and atmospheric style is dominant here, unlike the previous albums. Neo-classical composer and film scorer Craig Armstrong may have been an influence on Ulver as his use of electronics and hip-hop beats over strings and pianos is somewhat reminiscent of Ulver's later works.
The band followed up these two releases with two minimalist/ambient/glitch works, Silence Teaches You How to Sing and Silencing the Singing. These works featured minimal melodies and often had subtle weird and unnatural noises throughout the song structures; the band also stretched out at length, with "Silence Teaches You How to Sing" being the band's longest composition to date at over twenty-four minutes in length. Due to their individual rarity, they were later released together as Teachings in Silence.
Having proved their proficiency at making atmospheric electronic music, Ulver were hired to make music for cinema films Lyckantropen (whose soundtrack was released as Lyckantropen Themes), Svidd neger, and Uno.
In 2003, Ulver began making more symphonic music. They released A Quick Fix of Melancholy, which kept the minimalist, sparse stylings of their previous albums, while adding a much more expressive, dramatic, symphonic element, with various string sounds (most likely sampled) and various operatic singing styles.
In July 2004, the band finished recording their next album, Blood Inside, which was released on June 6th, 2005. With Blood Inside, the band stepped away from the more minimal styles they had been experimenting with previously. Bringing back more traditional rock instruments like guitar and acoustic drums (since 1998 the band had used primarily digital drums and/or sampled beats), and combining them with real and synthetic classical instruments, brass horns and sound samples, the band created something they had never done before. Managing to fuse genres ranging from rock, classical, minimalism, electronica and vintage progressive rock music with Garm's broad vocal range, Ulver created an album that was far beyond anything anyone has heard in the avant-garde scene.
Ulver have recently collaborated with drone band Sunn O))) on a 15-minute track which appears on Sunn O)))'s WHITEbox box set, released in July of 2006. Additionally, Ulver had announced back in 2002 that they had been working on a string remake of Nattens madrigal, but Garm has stated on the message board of his alternative rock band, Head Control System, that the project "is in a state of total dormancy".
The band's seventh album, Shadows of the Sun, was released on October 1, 2007. Garm called it “our most personal record to date. Low key, dark, and tragic”. The album mostly consists of dark ambient music, with lush symphonic orchestrations backing up the band's mellow material.
The band's eighth album, Wars of the Roses, appeared after nearly four years of silence in April 2011. This time around the band was highly influenced by progressive rock music, also incorporating elements of ambient, post-rock, and spoken word. The same year, the band also released the live album The Norwegian National Opera, a nearly career-spanning performance with the opera cited in the title that featured renditions of material dating from the Blake album to Wars of the Roses.
The band's ninth album, Childhood's End: Lost & Found from the Age of Aquarius, followed in 2012. A long-delayed cover album of material from the '60s psychedelic rock era, the material Ulver chose to cover was mostly quite obscure (with Jefferson Airplane's "Today" being easily the best known track), but further revealed the band's diverse range of influences.
In 2013, Messe I.X-VI.X appeared. A companion piece of sorts to Shadows of the Sun, the music on Messe continues in the same reflective, brooding vein as that album, but contains more influence from post-rock and modern classical music. Most of the tracks were instrumental this time around, and the band stretched out in length, with the longest song exceeding eleven minutes. The same year also saw the release of the live album Live at Roadburn, consisting mainly of live renditions of Childhood's End material (one improvised piece, inspired by and dedicated to the German krautrock band Can, was included as an encore).
2014 found the band's second collaboration with Sunn O))) released, the full-length album Terrestrials. Despite the metal background of the two bands, the material here was mostly subdued drone/dark ambient with little metal influence. The same year also saw the release of the box set Trolsk sortmetall 1993-1997, serving as the definitive retrospective on the band's black metal phase by collecting their 1993 demo Vargnatt, their first three albums, and previously unreleased rehearsal versions of four songs from Nattens madrigal. All material was remastered for this set, with Nattens madrigal seeing substantially more dynamic range and its bass line being clearly audible for the first time.
2016 saw the release of the band's double album ATGCLVLSSCAP, its title an acronym consisting of the signs of the Zodiac. Ulver constructed the material on this album around a series of improvised soundscapes recorded live at twelve different shows, but the studio overdubs create a tightly structured set of compositions, some of which are rearrangements of earlier Ulver songs such as Nowhere/Catastrophe. The material here, which consists of twelve tracks spanning eighty minutes, covers a wide range of genres, including psychedelic rock, progressive rock, dark ambient, avant-garde, and post-rock. The end of 2016 also saw the release of the film soundtrack Riverhead.
2017 saw the release of the band's synth pop album The Assassination of Julius Caesar, which marked the band's first album in since 2011 that wasn't: partially recorded live (ATGCLVLSSCAP, Messe I.X-VI.X); a cover album (Childhood's End); a collaboration (Terrestrials and, to a lesser extent, Messe again); or a film soundtrack (Riverhead). Hailed as a return to form (as much as a band like Ulver can have), it received some of the band's most positive reviews in years. The end of the year saw the release of a companion EP, Sic transit gloria mundi (Thus Passes the Glory of the World).
Ulver have established themselves as some of the most remarkable musical chameleons of the twenty-first century, and continue to evolve with each new release.
1993 - Rehearsal 1993 (demo)
1993 - Vargnatt (demo) (Wolf Night)
1994 - Bergtatt - Et eeventyr i 5 capitler (Spellbound - A Fairy Tale in 5 Chapters)
1995 - Kveldssanger (Twilight Hymns)
1997 - Nattens madrigal - Aatte hymne til ulven i manden (The Madrigal of the Night - Eight Hymns to the Wolf in Man)
1997 - The Trilogie: Three Journeyes Through the Norwegian Netherworlde (box set)
1998 - Themes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
1999 - Metamorphosis (EP)
2000 - Perdition City: Music to an Interior FIlm
2001 - Silence Teaches You How to Sing (EP)
2001 - Silencing the Singing (EP)
2002 - Teachings in Silence (compilation of the above two EPs)
2002 - Lyckantropen Themes (soundtrack)
2003 - 1993-2003: 1st Decade in the Machines (anthology)
2003 - Svidd neger (soundtrack)
2003 - A Quick Fix of Melancholy (EP)
2005 - Blood Inside
2007 - Shadows of the Sun
2011 - Wars of the Roses
2012 - The Norwegian National Opera (live album/video)
2012 - Childhood's End: Lost and Found from the Age of Aquarius
2013 - Oddities and Rarities #1 (anthology)
2013 - Live at Roadburn (live album)
2013 - Messe I.X-VI.X
2014 - Terrestrials (collaboration with Sunn O))))
2014 - Trolsk sortmetall 1993-1997 (Trollish Black Metal 1993-1997 or Bewitching Black Metal 1993-1997; box set)
2016 - ATGCLVLSSCAP
2016 - Riverhead (soundtrack)
2017 - The Assassination of Julius Caesar
2017 - Sic transit gloria mundi (Thus Passes the Glory of the World; EP)
2019 - Drone Activity
2020 - Flowers of Evil
A Song Of Liberty
Ulver Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
2. Albions coast is sick silent; the American meadows faint!
3. Shadows of Prophecy shiver along by the lakes and the rivers and mutter across the ocean. France rend down thy dungeon;
4. Golden Spain burst the barriers of old Rome;
5. Cast thy keys O Rome into the deep down falling, even to eternity down falling,
6. And weep.
7. In her trembling hands she took the new born terror howling;
8. On those infinite mountains of light, now barr'd out by the atlantic sea, the new born fire stood before the starry king!
9. Flag'd with grey brow'd snows and thunderous visages the jealous wings wav'd over the deep.
10. The speary hand burned aloft, unbuckled was the shield, forth went the hand of jealousy among the flaming hair, and hurl'd the new born wonder thro' the starry night.
11. The fire, the fire, is falling!
12. Look up! look up! O citizen of London, enlarge thy countenance; O Jew, leave counting gold! return to thy oil and wine; O African! black African! (go, winged thought, widen his forehead.)
13. The fiery limbs, the flaming hair, shot like the sinking sun into the western sea.
14 Wak'd from his eternal sleep, the hoary element roaring fled away;
15. Down rush'd beating his wings in vain the jealous king; his grey brow'd councellors, thunderous warriors, curl'd veterans, among helms, and shields, and chariots, horses, elephants: banners, castles, slings, and rocks,
16. Falling, rushing, ruining! buried in the ruins, on Urthona's dens;
17. All night beneath the ruins, then their sullen flames faded emerge round the gloomy King.
18. With thunder and fire: leading his starry hosts thro' the waste wilderness, he promulgates his ten commands, glancing: his beamy eyelids over the deep in dark dismay,
19. Where the son of fire in his eastern cloud, while the morning plumes her Golden breast,
20. Spurning the clouds written with curses, stamps the stony law to dust, loosing: the eternal horses from the dens of night, crying,
Empire is no more! and now the lion & wolf shall cease
Chorus
Let the Priests of the Raven of dawn, no longer in deadly black, with hoarse note curse the sons of joy. Nor his accepted brethren, whom tyrant, he calls free: lay the bound or build the roof. Nor pale religious letchery call that virginity, that wishes but acts not!
For every thing that lives is Holy.
The lyrics of "A Song of Liberty" by Ulver present a complex mix of imagery and symbolism, steeped in the language and themes of William Blake's poetry. The song aims to present a call to action, and a demand for revolution and liberation from oppressive systems while framing these calls within the context of divine revelation and spiritual transformation. The opening lines suggest the groan of the "eternal female" (potentially a reference to the divine feminine, or simply an archetype of oppressed and silenced peoples) is heard across the earth, with the sick and silent coast of Albion (a term sometimes used to refer to Britain) and faint meadows of America highlighting the widespread suffering.
The following lines continue to mix spiritual and political imagery, calling for the release of prisoners (France, the dungeon) and the overthrow of old empires (Golden Spain and Rome). The image of Rome throwing its keys into the abyss is a reference to the Book of Revelation, and the rejection of worldly power in favor of spiritual authority. The arrival of a new "born terror" hints at the eruption of new and revolutionary energy from the oppressed peoples of the world. They grasp this energy, rising to the mountains of light, and the angels with their "jealous wings" (perhaps a reference to fallen angels or demonic forces) hurl the "new born wonder" into the air. The following lines evoke cosmic upheaval, with fire and chaos raging and the "hoary element" fleeing.
The chorus following the main section of the song emphasizes the importance of breaking free of religious dogma and rejecting structures of oppression in all forms. The final line declares a fundamental truth, that all life is holy, and should be treated with respect.
Line by Line Meaning
The Eternal Female groan'd! it was heard over all the Earth:
The feminine divine power expressed sorrow; it was a universal call to action.
Albions coast is sick silent; the American meadows faint!
Society is unwell, and the natural world is suffering.
Shadows of Prophecy shiver along by the lakes and the rivers and mutter across the ocean. France rend down thy dungeon;
Foreboding omens whisper everywhere, urging revolution and the overthrowing of oppressive structures.
Golden Spain burst the barriers of old Rome;
A great power has risen from the ashes of a once-dominant empire.
Cast thy keys O Rome into the deep down falling, even to eternity down falling,
The empire that once held the keys to authority and power is now collapsing and plunging into the abyss of time.
And weep.
The fall of empires is a sorrowful event.
In her trembling hands she took the new born terror howling;
The turmoil of societal change is grasped with uncertainty and fear.
On those infinite mountains of light, now barr'd out by the atlantic sea, the new born fire stood before the starry king!
A new age is dawning, but it is obscured from view by distance and obstacles.
Flag'd with grey brow'd snows and thunderous visages the jealous wings wav'd over the deep.
Personified forces of authority, jealousy, and power are present in the world.
The speary hand burned aloft, unbuckled was the shield, forth went the hand of jealousy among the flaming hair, and hurl'd the new born wonder thro' the starry night.
The forces of power seek to destroy the new-born age through their own jealousy and aggression.
The fire, the fire, is falling!
The birth of a new era creates tumultuous change.
Look up! look up! O citizen of London, enlarge thy countenance; O Jew, leave counting gold! return to thy oil and wine; O African! black African! (go, winged thought, widen his forehead.)
The people of the world should take notice of the changing times, and expand their understanding, priorities, and worldview.
The fiery limbs, the flaming hair, shot like the sinking sun into the western sea.
The forces of change create a powerful, radiant spectacle, like the setting sun.
Wak'd from his eternal sleep, the hoary element roaring fled away;
The natural world is awakening, and the old ways are being cast aside.
Down rush'd beating his wings in vain the jealous king; his grey brow'd councellors, thunderous warriors, curl'd veterans, among helms, and shields, and chariots, horses, elephants: banners, castles, slings, and rocks,
The old powers are experiencing failure and defeat, as their loyal followers and physical symbols of their authority crumble and wither.
Falling, rushing, ruining! buried in the ruins, on Urthona's dens;
Destruction is rampant, and the remnants of the old world are being consumed by chaos.
All night beneath the ruins, then their sullen flames faded emerge round the gloomy King.
The aftermath of destruction yields a negative atmosphere, with the remnants of the shattered order surrounding the former ruler.
With thunder and fire: leading his starry hosts thro' the waste wilderness, he promulgates his ten commands, glancing: his beamy eyelids over the deep in dark dismay,
A new leader and their followers are forging a path through desolation, issuing orders with divine power and awe-inspiring presence.
Where the son of fire in his eastern cloud, while the morning plumes her Golden breast,
The dawn of the new age is sweeping across the horizon, bringing forth the power of light and fire.
Spurning the clouds written with curses, stamps the stony law to dust, loosing: the eternal horses from the dens of night, crying,
The coming of the new era rejects the oppressive symbols and institutions of the past, freeing the eternal cycle of life and progress from the darkness of ignorance.
Empire is no more! and now the lion & wolf shall cease
The old days of dominance and hostility are over, replaced by a new order of peace and acceptance.
Chorus
A collective expression of a broader message from the singers.
Let the Priests of the Raven of dawn, no longer in deadly black, with hoarse note curse the sons of joy. Nor his accepted brethren, whom tyrant, he calls free: lay the bound or build the roof. Nor pale religious letchery call that virginity, that wishes but acts not!
Religious and institutional figures who use their authority to suppress and control others must be resisted, and their hypocritical attitudes towards joy, freedom, and sexuality must be addressed and disempowered.
For every thing that lives is Holy.
The focus should be on the inherent divinity of all living things, rather than on the structures, institutions, and symbols of power that have fallen into obsolescence.
Contributed by Andrew J. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
OldStar
Fenriz' voice is unmistakable
Jason Derek Williams
"As it is, by itself, it indeed IS probably the worst they have offered us ... "
you're on crack. so much crack.
Andrea Suegart
This song makes my life better.
Ian .M
Such a brilliant album
CWK KWC
This album kindled a kind of faith in me.
Ian Totten
The people hating this album probably got into them after seeing a poster in The Sopranos.
windyhead 7
Gylve, Ihsahn and Samoth here
ulver44
2:37
Wrathalot
the fiiiireeeeee the fiiiiirrrrreeeeeeeeee is buuuuuuuuurniiiiiiiiiiiiing !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ian Totten
By the booklet it says the fire is coming.