Ulver
Wars of the Roses
Kscope

Ulver have always delivered dark music in one form or another. Many forms, actually. From black metal to experimental to electronic to progressive to ambient to avant-garde, they’ve permeated every conceivable pretentious genre throughout their 17-year career with profound passion and demonstrative secrecy. Their art, while ever changing, is always high, and now these Norwegian artists, four years removed from their last album, have embraced a whole new expression of accessibility. Having thrived as an independent band for years, Ulver now find themselves with management and backing from a big label, and have taken to doing something in the last few years they never have before: playing live. Wars of the Roses, then, ought to be considered carefully, its structure plastered with new clay, its window treatments pulled back at last. Opener “February MMX” comes on like a vacuous gothic pop rock song, leading us to believe the house of Ulver is stale and empty, but, once inside, the beating heart beneath the floor ignites the madness and renews all hope . Much like Shadows of the Sun, the remaining six songs on Wars of the Roses rely on breathless emptiness to achieve their haunting efficacy, a well-conceived mix of percussion, bowed guitar, strings, wind instruments, piano, electronics, and, in the case of “Providence,” a female vocalist (Siri Stranger). It remains, by large, a sleepy effort, but that’s not to say it’s boring, because Ulver’s ability to transcend mere ritualistic potency is mesmerizing. They finish it off with the 15:00 minute “Stone Angels,” whose lyrics are a text written by American poet Keith Waldrop and read by guitarist, and newest member of the band, Daniel O’Sullivan, a final statement on the band’s thematic vision, one that’s less concerned with mainstream malfeasance and more intent on doing what they’ve always done — divinely flexing their learned, classical, and philosophical muscles.

Listen to “England” from Wars of the Roses!

Electric Wizard
Black Masses
Rise Above Records

Those inevitable three year gaps that Electric Wizard puts between albums are always a heavy burden, man. There are very few bands I crave mind, beard, and soul, and England’s preeminent merchants of DOOM are one of ‘em, so when that seemingly infinite wait finally comes to an end, it’s a crushing exaltation. Thus Black Masses, the band’s seventh, has been received, and it doesn’t waste any time ripping into your psyche with the hyper-fuzzed “Black Mass” and Venus in Furs” before slowing down on “The Nightchild” to feast on what’s left of your mangled being. The rest of the album continues on in this relentlessly ritualistic, utterly dope, serpentine fashion, all while Jus Oborn faithfully wails away from some mid-level purgatory wasteland while tortured souls claw at his throat. It’s a brutally weird and noisy ensemble at times, punctuated by the unusually acid-fried “Turn Off Your Mind” and the thematic interplay with 2007’s Witchcult Today, courtesy of the album’s longest, most menacing song, “Satyr IX” (see “Saturnine”), and the stormy, brooding, frenzied feedback of “Crypt of Drugula” (see “Satanic Rites of Drugula”). It feels awfully good to be in the deathly embrace of the Wizard riff once again.

Listen to “The Nightchild” from Black Massses!

There’s this fella, Phill Lane, from London, England, and he’s got a beard. No big deal; I’ve got a beard, you’ve got a beard…anybody who’s somebody has a damn good beard. The difference, however, between us and Phill here is that Phill is about to do something completely asinine: shave his four-month-old beard.

Phill and his beard.

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