Still, Fenriz’s final contribution to the folk black metal canon would actually come in 1998, courtesy of one of the genre’s most influential acts, Ulver.
ULVER
“The first I heard of Ulver was back in 1994–1995, when we were going to play a tribute concert for Euronymous and I spoke with Garm and got a flyer for his band. Ulver really influenced me in the process of making Hades’ second album and I must agree with many fans, that the man has an awesome range both in music and vocals. Ulver is not music, but art!”
—Jørn (Hades)
Formed in late 1992, Ulver were one of a number of highly significant Norwegian groups that appeared in the aftermath of the country’s initial black metal explosion. Somewhat younger than the musicians within already-established bands such as Mayhem, Darkthrone, and even Emperor, the outfit’s founding member, Kristoffer “Garm” Rygg, was, like many of his peers, greatly inspired by the thriving Oslo scene he had discovered through visits to the Helvete store, a location and clique that provided the catalyst for his conversion to the genre.
“We were almost considered ‘prospects’ to use biker lingo,” Kristoffer reflects today. “I think it’s safe to say that when I was a teenager, visiting Helvete the first times, during the summer of ’91, the whole shift was about to happen. It was quite clear from all the occult props and the highlighted records as to what you should be into, as opposed to the stuff on Roadrunner and Earache, so I’d say that shop was quite imperative in me getting into black metal. First and foremost the music felt more interesting; it was wrapped up in a more explicit aura of darkness and danger than death metal, so we quickly took to those rules like ‘you shouldn’t wear colorful clothes when playing extreme metal.’ It was a sort of mass suggestion, or hypnosis going on, really. And there was a sense of almost patriotic pride that these first demos and albums were all Norwegian bands, a sense of knowing that this was the real deal.”
Being sixteen, Kristoffer was too young to drink at either the city’s now-famous Elm Street bar or the most popular venue of the era, Lusa Lottes pub, where legal drinkers such as Euronymous, Hellhammer, Faust, and members of Arcturus regularly sank beers. Kristoffer’s situation was not unique however, and he soon found himself drinking alongside many of the younger black metal fans in Oslo at a bar called Møllers, a venue that employed a decidedly relaxed approach to age verification at the time.
Unsurprisingly, when Ulver formed the lineup incorporated many of Kristoffer’s drinking partners, and the new band quickly grew into a six-piece as 1993 progressed. Taking care of the vocals himself, Kristoffer was joined by Sabazios/Mysticum bassist Robin Malmberg, guitarists Grellmund and Ali Reza (a Møllers regular of Iranian descent), and two slightly older and more experienced musicians, Håvard Jørgensen and Carl-Michael Eide, who both formed and played in Satyricon (as guitarist and drummer respectively) in its original, pre-Satyr/Frost incarnation. Taking their name from the Norwegian word for “wolves,” the group began to craft a sound that drew heavily upon the prevailing spirit of the time, though their enthusiasm initially outweighed their ability, as Kristoffer explains.
“We wanted to be a part of things somewhat more actively than just being consumers, to be a creative force, and the only way to do that was to play in a band. The whole philosophy was that black metal was about more than music, but of course it was primarily about musical enthusiasm … Carl-Michael was in Satyricon and had some musical skills, but the rest of us didn’t.”
Though generally working around the black metal blueprint, it’s interesting to note that many of the musicians in the band’s social circle would go on to make a name for themselves in bands with a distinctly innovative touch, such as doom outfit Lamented Souls, whose members would go on to such pioneering groups as Virus, Arcturus, Dødheimsgard, and Ved Buens Ende. Ulver would prove to be just as cutting-edge, adding their own distinctive take on the Nordic metal template almost immediately, perhaps paradoxically through the incorporation of inspirations from the past.
While a lo-fi and relatively generic rehearsal recording was leaked and later made available via trading circles, the band’s only sanctioned tape was issued later in 1993 and revealed the pronounced folk and prog influences within the band’s songwriting. Titled Vargnatt (“Wolf’s Night”), and with half of its lyrics written by Jørn H. Sværen of Orcustus fanzine, who became a member of Ulver some seven years later, the half-hour-long opus showcased the work of all three guitarists—Reza, Grellmund, and Haavard playing lead, rhythm, and acoustic guitars respectively—contrasting tranquil guitar parts alongside the more aggressive and familiar black metal elements.
“I was really into bands that sounded different,” comments Kristoffer on the integration of such elements, “and I think in those days that was a major criterion; to be a force to be counted on in the scene you had to create your own thing. This latter-day perception that true black metal only sounds like Darkthrone is just fucking silly, it’s a lot of distortion on the original idea which included stuff like Mercyful Fate, for crying out loud. The charisma of the music was really paramount. I fondly remember the first Samael and Master’s Hammer albums or more obscure releases such as the Rotting Christ/Monumentum split single, they all sounded very different to one another, but we loved it all the same.”
The young wolves: Ulver in their demo era circa 1993, Mean and Haavard not pictured.
While the musical content may have tempered its assault with more reflective passages, the tape’s sleeve revealed that the group were nonetheless in tune with the militant mindset of the era, memorably attacking two other new bands with the words: “We do not salute… Fleurety & Wind of Centuries… Guess you’ve not got to the point of understanding… you will remain nothing until the day you are nothing …”
“It didn’t take much to fall out with someone,” he admits, “in a weird way it was almost like we were striving for enemies in addition to the obvious common enemy we had in Christianity or society. I have to laugh thinking about all this… it really defied logic, the mindset that most of us adhered to. It was outlined by some sort of feeling or consensus that was absolutely ludicrous, but made perfect sense at the time; the evil thing. There were times when it was uncomfortable and it was also hard to live up to the ideals we set for ourselves. We were young and living at home with our folks so you had this sort of double life, this world with these people on one hand, then going to school and chasing Christian skirt on the other—not so pure in retrospect. I guess ‘theatrical’ is a key word, staging yourself to a big respect.”
The demo’s sleeve also featured an early appearance of the popular Never Stop the Madness logo, a parody of Roadrunner Records’ anti-drugs campaign, which suggests a certain affinity for narcotics within the group at the time.
“We were out every weekend, or going to the cottage, getting stoned and invoking the trolls,” Kristoffer recalls with a laugh. “There were quite a few people who endorsed drugs—we expanded upon reality and challenged it, in true occult tradition … I remember a lot of people taking the stance that drugs could fuck up your mind and that’s why you should take them, that you shouldn’t fear that in a way. Of course, some people got severe problems because of that, I know musicians who had some hard years and still struggle with it … ending as acid casualties or junkies.”
It was with fellow drug enthusiasts Mysticum that the band’s first official offering would surface the following year, the two groups collaborating on a split seven-inch. Ulver’s contribution to the release came courtesy of the song “Ulverytternes Kamp,” a heavily acoustic number from the Vargnatt demo that contrasted sharply with the more futuristic sounds on the other side of the record.
“That was definitely something we thought about at the time,” explains Kristoffer, “to present different faces of this new take on metal that was influenced by a lot of different things but was also shaping its own world and curious confines in a way. It was quite a magical time of revolting youth, quite creat
ive, despite the outward appearance of it being destructive.”
There was certainly an element of the destructive around Ulver by this point, with a significant lineup shift taking place that not only saw Robin leaving to concentrate on Mysticum, but, more acrimoniously, the departure of Carl-Michael, A.Reza, and Grellmund, the latter sadly committing suicide a few years later. The band shifted into a five-piece with the addition of three new members: guitarist/keyboard player Torbjørn “Aismal” Pedersen, bassist Hugh “Skoll” Mingay (previously of Fimbulwinter and later of Ved Buens Ende and Arcturus), and drummer AiwarikiaR, better known as Erik Lancelot.
“Erik was suggested by me by someone … might actually have been Euronymous,” Kristoffer recalls. “He’d had a couple of rehearsals with Burzum when Varg wanted to have an actual band, while Samoth was playing with him, but that didn’t work out, so I called him and we established a curious relationship which was very on and off. It was a mercurial relationship, us having strong similarities in certain areas and being complete opposites in others. I actually met our first guitarist [A. Reza] like a month ago and it was still weird, I think he still feels a bit disgruntled that we fired him back then. It was a stupid reason I’m sure, but that’s what it was like back then, we could be quite ruthless with each other.”
He continues: “Actually Shagrath [Skoll’s bandmate in Fimbulwinter, now frontman of Dimmu Borgir] was supposed to be the guitarist on the first album, and rehearsed with us for six months or so, but then Dimmu formed and I didn’t particularly dig that at the time. I have absolutely no problem with it now, but at the time I found it difficult, so I guess I gave him an ultimatum and he chose to go with them, which is how we got in touch with Aismal. He had just moved to Oslo from the northern city of Hammerfest and was an acquaintance of Tania ‘Nacht’ Stene [Ulver’s cover artist for their first three albums], who introduced me to him. Carl-Michael left partly in sympathy to the other two guys I fired, but he also wanted to make a different kind of music to me and formed Ved Buens Ende which was really oddball stuff. Now I listen and think it’s one of the coolest albums that came out of those times, but at the time we wanted to do different things basically.”
Signing to Head Not Found, the label of Slayer Magazine’s Metalion, the band’s next recording, 1995’s Bergtatt—Et Eeventyr I 5 Capitler (“Taken by the Mountains—A Fairy Tale in 5 Chapters”), was initially drafted for a second split-release—with Gehenna, a band Kristoffer had introduced to Metalion—but was ultimately released as a standalone album.
“When we made the album it seemed too much of its own piece to amalgamate with someone else’s vision,” reveals Kristoffer. “It was in accordance with the elitist vibe that was going on at the time, though we were buddies with Gehenna … I was even on their first album. We started rehearsing the album with the demo lineup, but that disintegrated in ’93, so we recruited some other guys and rehearsed across the hall from Mayhem’s rehearsal space and recorded in 1994 in a loft in the old town of Oslo.”
As its title suggests, Bergtatt draws heavily upon Norwegian folklore, specifically popular legends based around the idea of people being lured into the mountains by trolls or spirits, the album’s narrative being written from the perspective of a woman who suffers just such a fate. Inspired by Baroque poetry, such as that of eighteenth-century writer Ludvig Holberg, the lyrics were written by Kristoffer—now employing the pseudonym Garm—and translated into archaic Dano-Norwegian by new drummer Erik.
The music draws just as heavily upon folk influences as the lyrics, the first number (whose title translates to “Led Astray in a Forest of Trolls”) dominated by Kris’ clean, multilayered, and surprisingly tranquil vocals, a definite eyebrow-raiser at a time when screamed vocals were the norm. The fourth number (“A Voice Beckons”) goes a step further, featuring no metal elements at all, and throughout the remaining three songs there is a frequent use of clean-sung vocals (male and female), acoustic guitars, and flute accompanying the emotive and occasionally embittered black metal sections.
“We used to sit around and listen to traditional folk recordings, like for instance Draumkvedet [a late medieval Norwegian poem],” explains Kristoffer when asked about the source of this musical influence. “We were quite into that at the time and it also synchronized with Norwegian history lessons at school, we picked up on a lot of National Romantic poetry and literature as well as painters like Lars Hertervig, J.C. Dahl, Thomas Fearnley, and the likes. It was a real interest and it felt natural to integrate all of that into Ulver. We felt no one had really done it that way; sure, you had the whole Viking thing, but what we were doing wasn’t really anything to do with what, for example, the Enslaved guys were doing. We were almost trying to reinterpret the medieval and baroque perception of Norwegian culture—Christianity had long since established itself, so it was important for us to show it from a ‘Satanic’ angle and turn things round a bit. There’s never been any shortage of megalomania in this band.”
If Bergtatt had hinted at such preoccupations, its 1996 follow-up Kveldssanger (“Twilight Songs”) completely cemented the vision. Entirely made up of short acoustic folk numbers and largely instrumental, this thirteen-song opus is a deeply emotional and atmospheric journey, infused with inspirations from romanticism, nature, and the night. Largely removed from black metal—or indeed metal of any sort—it nonetheless bears a melancholy and depth that seems to resonate among a certain type of metal listener, and the album would prove hugely influential in its own right, informing not only the black metal scene but directly inspiring the loose musical scene that continues to grow today around acts such as Empyrium, Tenhi, Nest, and Ainulindalë.
“Doing that album kind of signified that we were bound to go other places,” the vocalist considers, “but we didn’t imagine the album would get the recognition that it has now. It was more meant to give emphasis to the original idea that you didn’t have to amp up, speed up, and scream in order to be ‘black.’ Some of our contemporaries hated it and others thought it was great, so it kind of went down as it always has … reverence or revulsion. It was quite uncompromising so was bound to have an adverse effect on some people.”
By this point, Kristoffer had joined the progressive symphonic black metal outfit Arcturus, as well as Borknagar, a Viking/folk metal supergroup that included members of Enslaved, Gorgoroth, and Immortal. Despite this, Ulver maintained their album-a-year release rate thanks to 1997’s Nattens Madrigal—Aatte Hymne til Ulven i Manden (“The Madrigal Of The Night—Eight Hymns To The Wolf In Man”), an album that saw the band depart Head Not Found for the much larger Century Media Records. If anyone was expecting the band to temper their sound for a more commercial audience, however, they would be shocked, and the group once again surprised followers, this time by abandoning most of the folk touches that had become their hallmark in exchange for a stripped-down, Darkthrone-esque assault. Featuring the same lineup as Bergtatt (the acoustic songs of the second album had not required the talents of either bassist Skoll or second guitarist Aismal), the recording signaled a clear return to black metal territories, at least temporarily.
“These first three albums were already mapped out in ’94,” Kristoffer explains, “but we also felt a slight change of heart after the second album, that we came across as too soft or something. It was a matter of proving we could be damn well ferocious if we wanted to, but it also tied in with the lyrics and how we wanted to present the beast.”
Indeed, with its screamed vocals, pounding percussion, and high-paced tremolos, the album is almost a textbook example of high-quality nineties Norwegian black metal—a strangely conservative move from a band as envelope-pushing as Ulver. Such convention even included a heavily caustic production, one so lo-fi it led to rumors that the album had been recorded in the forest on a simple analog recorder.
“It was actually the same studio [Bondi] that Mysticum used to record their album,” reveals Kristoffer, “only twelve tracks, an early digital studio, basically a small
desk with digital recorders. I think we amped up and played straight in and really made no effort in beautifying the product at all—much inspired by Darkthrone, I’ll admit to that. Around 1999/2000 we recorded that album again with a string quartet—we’ll probably never release that, but we did at one point want to reinterpret the album. We always had a very strong focus on and interest in the sound of things, because it does quite radically change what you’re hearing. Melody is given far too much credit I think sometimes.”
Having just delivered such a quintessential slice of black metal, the band’s next move was to turn away from the genre altogether. Indeed, today Ulver have very little—if anything—to do with their black metal past, their live shows featuring no evidence of these early albums and their music exploring a wide range of styles from electronica to industrial to film scores and much more. Indeed, around this time the band would distance themselves quite publicly from the genre, most memorably in an interview for Slayer Magazine, where Erik stated:
“ULVER was born out of the Black Metal scene … However, bearing in mind the way ULVER has developed over the years both musically, lyrically, and philosophically, the label is becoming too limiting … The essence of Black Metal is Heavy Metal culture, not Satanic philosophy … the average Black Metal record buyer is a stereotypical loser—a good-for-nothing who was teased as a child, got bad grades at school, lives on social welfare and seeks compensation for his inferiority complexes and lack of identity by feeling part of an exclusive gang of outcasts uniting against a society which has turned them down.”
Kristoffer was somewhat less harsh during the interview, but his criticisms were no less biting, stating, “[I] find it difficult to see myself as a part of this movement because a lot of Black Metal people follow very fallacious and narrow concepts of life. I seek to be impeccable, and this can only be achieved through open-mindedness. This implies interests outside what is common in the above circles … Black Metal now makes ignorant and unconfident young people feel warm and cozy, and functions more as a crutch for individual weakness than anything else. Now isn’t that cute!”
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