Ulver, Norway's most evolutionary band, are celebrating their 25th anniversary in 2020. They began as an extreme black metal project but have since followed a labyrinthian, experimental path through various genres, including electronic, industrial, and ambient musics. They've composed soundtracks and created art installations, and cut an unclassifiable album with
Sunn O))). 2017's
The Assassination of Julius Caesar was a "doom dance" offering that deliberately channeled early influences such as
Depeche Mode and
New Order, imprinted with
Ulver's dark, romantic musical signature.
Flowers of Evil's release coincides with
Ulver's anniversary and the simultaneous publication of Wolves Evolve: The Ulver Story, a fat autobiography with interviews and photographs. Though frontman
Kristoffer "Garm" Rygg is the only original member, longtime keyboardist/programmer
Tore Ylwizaker, lyricist
Jorn H. Svaeren, and arranger
Ole Alexander Halstensgard all remain. Filling out the lineup are guitarist
Stian Westerhus, drummer
Ivar Thormodsaeter, and percussionist/engineer
Anders Moller. This outing sticks close to the sonic blueprint of the 2017 album; it too was co-produced by
Michael Rendall (
The Orb) and
Youth (
Martin Glover).
Ulver double down on the apocalyptic dance rock of the record's predecessor, though this is more cinematic and propulsive. After an ambient electronic intro, opener "One Last Dance" (with guest guitarist
Christian Fennesz) sounds like the industrial electronics of
Human League before they became pop stars. Its lyrics are drenched in grief yet offer
Ulver's manifesto: "We are wolves/This is our song/We're ready to go...." The single "Russian Doll" is a hooky yet melancholy pulsating doom disco lament; it equals transcendent first single "Nostalgia" as one of the most fractious yet danceable tunes the band have ever recorded. Dirty over-amped guitars add an anthemic quality to "Machine Guns and Peacock Feathers" as
Garm depicts the warring self-destructive impulses that govern the 21st century. The jarring industrial dance music in "Hour of the Wolf" is illuminating for its chilling clarity; an elegiac acoustic piano adorns the drum and synth loops with warmth and emotion. "Apocalypse 1993" juxtaposes doom dance and electro in a morality tale about David Koresh and the Branch Davidian cult; the band actually sound like a drugged
Talk Talk circa
It's My Life. "Little Boy" weds darkwave to post-punk, and electro-pop to skeletal Detroit techno, all the while relating the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the mutant post-punk disco of the single "Nostalgia," the set closes with a pristine yet emotionally devastating "A Thousand Cuts." Throbbing bass lines ride alongside
Rygg's smooth, silky vocal delivery as a distant violin sings to the drums and synths. The song's narrative, while open to interpretation, exists inside the polar opposites sorrowful and harrowing. The music on
Flowers of Evil traverses with jarring effectiveness both past and future. Its songs explore grief, hysteria, madness, vulnerability, and romance as inseparable and indelible aspects of the human spirt, resulting in a masterwork of the familiar and the disorienting. ~ Thom Jurek
