It is a great idea to pay tribute to ULVER - one of the most outstanding bands in modern times - in form of this beautifully arty cover album. Some well-known musicians of the electro-scene already honored the Norwegian wolf pack in 2003 and produced some fine remixes for 1993-2003: 1st Decade InThe Machines on the occasion of decennial band anniversary. Thank god, Bogdan Raczynski, Martin Horntveth or The Third Eye Foundation hasn’t dreamt of rerecording Garm’s vocal masterstrokes or having them performed by someone else. The singer with his inimitable voice is eventually the figurehead of ULVER and each attempt in violating the eleventh commandment and reinterpreting his vocals shall be, God willing, punished with eternal agony.
You can find some of these candidates on My Own Wolf: A New Approach To Ulver who are on their way straight to the Beelzebub. Very bad faux pas are certainly ASHTAR (The Marriage Of Heaven & Hell’s reed-thin elfish vocals) and YEAR ZERO (Nowhere/Catastrophe) who present themselves very extremely feeble, uninspired and passionless in the vocal sector. The opener of CD 1 Lost In Moments (UNFURL) is no exception, but it can convince with a bias on Goth Metal. The guitar leads are of special interest, which by far are, rather than so filigree like the freakish saxophone solos, but technically capably and emotionally performed.
You can find stylistically a relatively broad spectrum from hectic, Industrial/EBM-like Gothic (Graablick Blew Hun Vaer from FB[FoRce]), primitively blasted Black Metal (e.g. Wolf And Hatred of ASMODÉE), slow, unsettled Doom Death Metal (BOSQUE with their underdone version of Utreise including beautifully out of tune guitars) to very experimental and extremely lengthy Ambient-like interpretations. Such genre cocktail is seldomly boring. But for me, that’s not enough. The originals have raised the bar so high that one can burn one’s fingers rapidly, no matter, if one tries to play safe and keep close to the original or if one dares to create something entirely new out of the original.
Anyhow, I’d like to highlight some quite felicitous versions. AVATHAR have recorded a cool groovy Pagan Metal song of Utreise. Just as worth hearing are the wonderfully rumbling Doom version of Not Saved (FLUORYNE) or the extremely atmospheric and frightening Ambient version of Eitttlane (AIDAN BAKER).
All in all, My Own Wolf: A New Approach To Ulver is a very motley tribute album. The label could definitely have acted more selective in their band choice: one CD would have completely sufficed, to comprehensively represent ULVER’s numerous stations and their creation. Unnecessary ballast would have spared us this way.