Ulver – Wars of the Roses

When February MMX begins to pick up speed, you’re left wondering: have Norway’s former Black Metal exponents Ulver gone pop? It wouldn’t be a huge shock, given Kristoffer Rygg’s track record of unpredictability, but it’s not quite accurate. Instead, this is a distillation of Ulver’s work to date, incorporating not only the rock dynamics of 2005’s Blood Inside and the sombre omnipresence of 2007’s Shadows of the Sun, but utilising the claustrophobic atmosphere of Æthenor to join the dots between.

This breadth of scope may be due to the presence of Æthenor co-conspirator Dan O’Sullivan’s addition to the line-up, but it may also be due to their cautious steps into the live arena in recent years, putting new emphasis on combining their perfectionist tendencies with a desire to immediately hit the listener square in the third eye. As a result, Wars of the Roses may not be the most ambitious moment in Ulver’s history but it is their most balanced – a far-reaching work that melds gothic atmospherics and electronic fine-tuning to craft awe-inspiring results. [David Bowes]