BERGTATT - ET EEVENTYR I 5 CAPITLER

Ulver starts young and already ambitious! Looking for a black metal album that will inspire you to listen to other music styles such as beautiful acoustic music, folk traditions and progressive rock landscapes? Do you want to experience the melancholic winter in the northern Norway while sitting in your armchair at home without having to open your eyes? Then you are the right place!

Bergtatt serves as a phenomenal standout album praised by almost all fan circles - black metal purists, progressive metal/rock open minds, Viking metal fans. The album is well balanced with its soft passages and brutal raw black metal blasts. The music is not very complex but compositionally remarkable and shows that the young lads have listened to something before recording this.

The restrained mood starts with the melodic first song. Worth mentioning are good vocal harmonies and Opeth-like riffing in the second part.

A short beautiful Genesis-like intro produced by flute and acoustic guitar follows and then we're thrown into shrieks and crueless blasts with interesting vocal lines in the background.

The third track "Braablick Blev Hun Vaer" also has a short acoustic intro before exploding into a simple black metal pattern but the menacing chords after a minute have a deep effect and don't get scared by a thunder! ;-) The beautiful pattern that displays a human being walking in a snow, became a popular pattern for the Viking metal bands - here it is accompanied by a classical piano that does not suit the overall concept though. The chord structure that follows is less menacing than in the previous part.

The next song predates the future music orientation on the second album - vocals supported by minimalist guitars. Female support adds to the colour.

The last epic track "Bergtatt-Ind I Fjeldkamrene" features beautiful soft acoustic solo that must have been heard by Mikael Akerfeldt before "Morningrise". The chords are dark and if I can hear well, there are even brass instruments used to a great supporting effect. The storm lasts for a few minutes before the acoustic outro with nature's sound closes this masterpiece.

Even though this album won't be liked by a conventional proghead, I have to attribute it 5 stars as a masterpiece of progressive black metal. There only four similar good releases to my knowledge - one album each by Borknagar, Enslaved and Agalloch.