Ulver — Vargnatt — recorded 15 to 17/10/1993, released 5/11/1993
Well well well, what have we here. Ulver’s first and only demo as far as I’m aware: Vargnatt, from 1993. Upon first pressing play I immediately noticed that the lyrics are all in Dano-Norwegian, a dead koiné language that evolved between the 18th and 19th centuries, which is something that I like, being into the whole languages thing and all. They’re also about epic forsest folklore and such, as one would expect. This is their only release with guitarists Reza and Grellmund and drummer Czral. What does that entail? I do not know.
Afaict the style is in line with the whole norwegian black metal thing, but the roots of Ulver’s later thing with mixing different influences into their sound is already here, with some very jazzy and proggy sections worked in some songs as well as folk, obviously. It’s nothing too creative, I don’t think, but it works pretty well for the most part. Track two, Tragediens Trone, is the one where this is the most obvious, with a very prog intro section that suddenly devolves into some of the most goblin-esque raw black metal to be found in this whole deal.
My man Garm THE THROAT GOAT is already flexing his vocal chords in order to achieve some deep guttural growling, gollum-esque whining and occasional soulful crooning — not to speak of the inexplicable high-pitched operatic falsetto singing he does in a couple of songs, which honestly blows and is comparable to a week’s worth of shit that has been shoveled out of a house that is inhabited by a large number of dogs.
The recording sounds like shit as you would expect, but honestly not as bad as some stuff I’ve seen from that exact same scene and moment in time. Some little details and stuff are easily missed due to the low quality, true, but it’s overall pretty ok and listenable unless you’re an insufferable audiophile.
The fifth track, Nattens Madrigal, is the one I thought was more well-developed and concise and high-quality, even if it does feature some of that canine-excrement-like opera singing. There’s a bit of everything in there: hard-hitting riffs, soulful acoustic strumming, spooky sections, growling, etc and if I had to reccomend one track out of this whole thing that’d be it. The first one, Her Begynner Mine Arr, is also pretty formidable, with some heavy ass riffs and shredding, even though in the end it feels kinda short.
All in all it’s not terrifically mindblowing but it’s pretty strong for a demo. It’s fine but not something I’d really spin a whole lot. However it’s also not even 30 minutes long so what the hell why the fuck not eh.
DOES IT PULVERIZE? Not really but I mean, there’s nothing terribly wrong with it as well I guess.
