Ulver & Sunn O))) — Terrestrials (recorded 2008–2012, released 3/2/2014)
Homeboys, I’m about to be honest with y’all. You know I can’t lie. I gotta keep it one hundred. I gotta keep it real. You know how it is. Ever since Wars of the Roses I’ve been getting the feeling that both Ulver and me, as a reviewer, have been sort of going through the motions a bit. The music is ok, they do their thing, and it’s been getting progressively hard for me to think of what to say about it. We’re kind of getting ourselves into a late-era Scorn review thread situation where the music starts feeling like it’s sorta settling in a comfortable little nook, and the main consequence for me is that it’s just difficult for me to really develop a train of thought like I usually do.
Well, this album was made in collaboration with the good fellas over at Sunn O))), whomst The Ulver Boys had been in touch since the mid 90s. Much to my relief, that lends Terrestrials some variation when compared to their immediately previous stuff. As expected from a collab between an ambient/electronica act and a drone metal one, this is all about slowly shifting and growing layers of sound and texture, which is something we all have to admit is very much within Ulver and Butt Ho)))e’s ballpark. And, before anything else, I’m gonna go on record and say that it all sounds pretty great. The variety of sounds is surprisingly wide: you got all the droning guitars and synth textures you’d expect, sure, but you also got classical instruments like strings and clavichord-sounding things, you got somewhat jazzy horns from time to time, you got knockoff Tuvan throat singing, you got garbled whispered samples, and all sorts of other stuff that definitely does make a difference.
Krissy does sing from time to time, and I’ll say his style can feel a little jarring and unexpected when paired to this kind of music, but apart from that there’s not really much to complain about, even considering that I’m not the biggest fan of his voice. Sun O)))’s thing has always been the wall of sound, that powerful barrage that overwhelms you with brute force alone, and that does lend to some interesting soundscapes when combined with Ulver’s thing, which is being a drama queen. Beautiful chords dissolve into harsh, screechy noise sections and back again, with a surprisingly large amount of subtle variations and little things here and there. Simply put, Ulver’s dynamicism and drama contrasts Sunn’s power and graveness in a splendid manner, and it’s pretty hard to imagine any other two-band combination achieving this.
It’s yet another album that’s kinda hard to talk about, but I guess in this case that’s more due to the style than to the quality itself. It was well received at the time of release, and I see no reason why it should not have been. It’s more than just a little too strong and overwhelming to make it into a daily rotation sort of thing, sure, but it’s definitely something I’ll be spinning again in the future, for creative and powerful sound architecture alone if not for booty-shaking and/or head-banging energy.
DOES IT PULVERIZE? It do.
