Content warning for depictions of lynching, self-harm and violence.
Ulver (Norwegian for “Wolves”) originally started out as a black metal band, but they switched genres after their third album, “Nattens madrigal: Aatte hymne til ulven i manden” (“Night’s Madrigal: Eight Hymns to the Wolf in Man”). It would be suitable to say that Ulver is like a musical Swiss army knife and a jack of all trades. They are certainly eclectic in their musical discipline, experimenting and creating a dynamic discography. On Nov. 29, 2024, “Liminal Animals,” released after the death of the band’s keyboardist, Tore Ylwizaker, took a synthpop approach.
The album begins with “Ghost Entry,” a beautiful lamentation of the art and power of recording as well as the process of enjoying music. According to the lyrics, this song was written and recorded on Monday, June 21, which would fall under 2021 at the latest if the lyrics are truthful. The vocalist, Kristoffer Rygg, calls his recorded voice “a distant ghost,” which with the synthpop backing makes one reminisce about the 1980s. The “moving objects” and “the music they make” could be referring to the consumerism of buying merchandise for bands and artists someone would enjoy. After a short instrumental break, a beautiful bassline becomes apparent that accompanies the vocals. The vocals at the end make Rygg sound like a ghost: a clever usage of mixing and reverb.
“A City in the Skies” is immediately disturbing, as it begins with, “A Black widow hangs from a tree,” which makes one think about the spider until the lyrics continue. These include: “Marked with the cross, a symbol of concern,” “Under the cover of night, a powerful play, rolling into the city, wild beasts of prey,” “The killing machines, what are they thinking of?” and especially after the instrumental break with the softly played part, “Break the window, get into the house, wipe the memory, we were never here.” The song tells a chilling story of a lynching by using animal metaphors, or maybe that’s reading too deeply into the lyrics, and the “Black widow” really was a spider with a cross instead of an hourglass shape on its body, though the second verse wouldn’t make as much sense. A city in the skies makes one think of Heaven, after all.
“Forgive Us” is about asking both the world and God for forgiveness: two conflicting opposites as Earthly and Heavenly things are juxtaposed as different and even contradictory to one another. Appeasing both sides surely isn’t going to end well. The theme of the Greek god Pan dying will become relevant for the final song. The song features a beautiful trumpet solo from Norwegian avant-garde jazz artist Nils Petter Molvær.
“Nocturne #1” is a solemn instrumental that sounds similar to metalcore band Loathe’s ambient material with the synth melodies. The lowest buzzing synth slowly swallows the rest of the synths in the mix.
“Locusts” begins with a quiet soundscape of what sounds like a street before percussive instruments and a piano swallow the recording. There’s a metallic instrument like a xylophone in the mix. The lyrics reference how locusts are used in “The Bible” to signify how, in “The Book of Revelation,” the end of the world is predicted partially with a swarm of locusts attacking. The lyric, “The wind is picking up pages from the scriptures” exemplifies this Biblical reference.
“Hollywood Babylon” is quite the provocative song with the lyric, “Don’t fuck with America, they’ll shoot you anyway,” followed by gunshot sound effects to make it clear that they’re talking about gun violence and not necessarily just filming. Satirically, the song advocates for self-harm (which is a terrible idea) as well as violence, stuffing your face presumably with food and finding solace in religion with the line, “Sing ‘Hallelujah’ to the Lord, it’s how this song goes,” before going into the chorus with the lyric cited prior and not the word “Hallelujah.”
The lyric “Don’t speak nothing but the truth” is a double negative, which purposefully makes the message that people are allowed to lie. “You never know who’s watching you” feeds into the paranoia many people have about being surveilled, especially online. This song comes off as a sardonic critique of American society.
“The Red Light” tells an imaginative story with only a handful of lyrics, many of them repeated, about an apocalypse where “man is wolf to man.” A beautiful call-back to “Ghost Entry” is found in the lyric, “A message on the radio, written a hundred years ago,” also feeding into the post-apocalyptic narrative.
“Nocturne #2” is the second and final instrumental track on “Liminal Animals.” The instrumentation this time around sounds like something industrial band Nine Inch Nails would produce for their instrumental “Ghosts” series or for “Hesitation Marks” with the arpeggiating synths. There’s a stringed instrument in the mix that sounds like a shamisen.
The final track, “Helian (Trakl),” is presumably a recitation of the poem “Helian” by Georg Trakl in Norwegian. The vocal inflections themselves sound like how Trent Reznor whispers the bridge of “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails. The synths in the background help this comparison even more. Otherwise, one could get away with comparing the vocals with Peter Steele’s of Type O Negative with the beginning of “Christian Woman.” The point is that Rygg’s voice sounds seductive.
Ulver has come a long way from being just a solid black metal band. They achieved a lot in their 30-plus years of making music from an experimentation standpoint. This is just another record in their expansive catalogue and a pretty decent one at that.
Rating: 3.5/5