Review: Ulver – Neverland
Ulver is tough to nail down and they obviously like it that way.
Outside of their early trilogy of black metal albums, there’s a lack of consensus among critics as to what the “good” Ulver even is. With each new album, the band has taken sharp stylistic turns and explored whatever they find sonically interesting. Even the most casual listener would have to be impressed by the permission Ulver have given themselves to just do whatever the fuck they want without a care for critical reception.
In spite of that, Ulver has been surprisingly consistent over the course of their last few releases. Since 2017’s The Assassination of Julius Caesar, the band had seemingly found comfort in a dark and moody ’80s synth pop sound with traditional song structures and production. Their newest album, Neverland, is an intentional step away from that aesthetic; it’s almost entirely instrumental and every song sounds like some ambient soundtrack to a dream. The album’s striking cover art feels both vibrant and foreboding; brightly-colored flowers are set against dark crashing waves on a rocky shoreline. It gives a similar vibe as the art on their first three albums, especially compared to their artwork over these past few decades.
The band sets the stage right away with album opener “Fear in a Handful of Dust,” which is named after a line in T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” Eliot’s poem is sampled on the track and it deals with the themes of disillusionment, death, and regeneration—all ideas that are squarely in Ulver’s wheelhouse and mesh well with the overall atmosphere of Neverland. The juxtaposition of beautiful field recordings and cold pulsing synths evokes an impending technological doom followed by a forced return to nature.
It’s somewhat difficult to describe many of the songs on this album since they’re mostly just ambient soundscapes. The most immediately enjoyable songs are those that have some traces of Ulver’s previous works peeking through the ambient haze. For example, it’s easy to imagine “Elephant Trunk” or “People of the Hills” having a spot on any of their last three full-lengths with some added vocal arrangement. “Weeping Stone” also has echoes of 2000’s Perdition City, which is a top post-black metal trilogy Ulver album for me.
Ulver doesn’t often divulge the meanings behind their music and instead leaves it to the listener to figure out. There’s an obvious lack of lyrical content to analyze on Neverland, so we’re mostly left with clues provided in song titles as well as the highly subjective feelings the music creates for the listener. Several titles on Neverland seem to point toward an uneasiness with the current state of the world without completely spelling out Rygg’s exact point of view.
“Hark! Hark! The Dogs Do Bark” shares a title with the English nursery rhyme and references the Tudor period where joblessness and overall poverty conditions forced many people to beg in the streets. The song also sounds something like the result of British electronic artist Burial scoring a DVD menu screen of a mid-2000’s action film.
“Pandora’s Box” is a reference to the well-known Greek myth where the unintended consequences of curiosity bring suffering upon the world. “Quivers in the Marrow” describes a deep uneasiness , one that’s felt deep in your bones. The latter song carries a sense of dread that never lets up during its 3 1/2-minute runtime.
Then there’s the closing track, “Welcome to the Jungle,” which is either a wink to late ’80s L.A. sleaze or a proclamation that we’ve entered some period of chaos and danger. My guess is that Rygg is on some real bleak “we live in a society” type shit right now, as many of us are. The song is propelled by a Middle Eastern-sounding melody but mostly acts as a warm-up for the fantastic and aptly-titled closing track “Fire in the End.”
This goes without saying by now, but anyone still hoping that Ulver will someday return to their black metal roots is sure to be disappointed in Neverland. Ulver will never return to black metal and it’s puzzling that anyone would still hold out hope because it’s been nearly 30 years since we’ve heard anything resembling a tremolo-picked riff on an Ulver album. Neverland instead fits right alongside other discography entries like Perdition City and ATGCLVLSSCAP, although it ends up being more of a background listening experience than either of those. That being said, there are enough enjoyable moments on Neverland to spark some optimism for what sounds Ulver may be exploring next.
3/5 Flaming Toilets ov Hell
Neverland is available now on Bandcamp.
