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Ulver - Shadows of the Sun CD (album) cover

SHADOWS OF THE SUN

Ulver

 

Post Rock/Math rock

4.09 | 297 ratings

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TRoTZ
Prog Reviewer
5 stars Known for their futuristic worlds of cacophony, bizarreness and abstraction (Perdition City, Blood Inside), I confess surprise couldn't be greater with "Shadows of the Sun". This time, by opposite, the album flows guided by its heavy flagrance - a dense, melancholic nostalgia, a disturbing catharses eliciting Mankind's worst fears and actions, like the inconsequential, restless moan of despair before the end.

A consuming disturbing pain is gently manifested in "Eos". Its ethereal and subtle ambiance created by a fuss of violins, strings and keyboards owes nothing to the Camel ones, with every detail seemed to be made to touch the deepness. The track's emotive charge culminates pleasantly in a sublime recital. "All the Love" continues this intricate paradigm and adds piano (a constant from this track to the end), saxophone and abstract drums to the scenario. Classic piano leads the next tracks "Like Music", "Vigil" and "Shadows of the Sun", painting them beautifully, while each one of the first two end in a metaphysical strident chaos remembering the band's last albums. "Let the Children Go" is another highlight of the album, possibly the best, together with the first one, with its dense, disturbing dark mood, not only an antagonistic organized chaos of effects, but also a moan full of emotive charge. "Solitude" is a well design cover of Black Sabbath's which fits like a glove on the mood. The album ends with the grotesque feeling of "Funebre" and the releasing "What Happened?" turning back to the "Eos" (and the album's) main motif. Lyrics around all the work are inconspicuously vague, enlarging even more the album's introspectiveness.

In a time where music seems to find progressively more difficulty in having more than simply a "couple" of years validity, where originality without dissonance seems so difficult to achieve, and where subtlety and feeling rarely equal or surpass the past works, this is, truly, a precious gem...

TRoTZ | 5/5 |

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