Various Artists | ‘My Own Wolf’

It’s both incredible and inevitable that a tribute album to Ulver should appear. Incredible because it seems such a futile pursuit, destined to sound as mere flattery and imitation, and inevitable because of the deep respect and mythical status Ulver have always commanded - in any of their many guises.

It is probably for the better that almost every single band penning tribute here is unknown. The risk to more familiar names would be immense, and it would surely be the ultimate in last laughs for Ulver to have their peers look like amateurs by covering them. Thankfully though, this same situation allows new acts to come forward with their interpretations of Ulver’s awesome body of work, slightly freer from judgement, and thus free to let loose on the bands music.

You can roughly divide it in two. Disc one could be seen as relatively standard, in which the black metal era gets the once over with particular attention to ‘Nattens Madrigal’. In this capacity Asmodée do best with their ultra authentic yet full of personality reworking of ‘Wolf And Hatred’. When the chips are down though, it’s monkey-see, monkey-do. Much like the Dead Can Dance tribute album ‘The Lotus Eaters’ one feels the crassness of metal bands ruining this band’s subtleties with their stomp, to which Unfurl’s ‘Lost In Moments’ attests. If you can imagine that mastertrack with stomping guitars, be my guest; I prefer to fast forward.

Disc two though represents the real reason you need this cd. Primarily ambient, it reflects perhaps more than the metal interpretations the real love of what Ulver contributed to the post extreme metal musical landscape. What’s so good here is that each artist, despite being 99% unheard of, audibly understands the song they’re reworking. Take especially Aidan Baker’s version of ‘Eitttlane’. Far from a naive copy, it steals a little of just that magic that Ulver themselves were bottling, and takes it to a new windowledge overlooking the original. Fantastic.

The ‘Lykantropen Themes’ were designed for simplicity, and thus its representations are authentic. Perhaps ‘Perdition City’, because of the amount of natural soul in it, would always prove the most difficult, and that’s why Year Zero and Panacea Entrapments’ ‘Nowhere’ and ‘Porn Piece’ respectively have done extra well in replicating tremendously personal material. The atmospherics on this half are superb.

If you’ve ever heard the DCD tribute, bear it in mind when considering whether to buy this also. Its metal bands returned endearing but ultimately unsophisticated interpretations of 20 year old material that only served to show up the devastating cool of the original. Still, it was good, and listenable. This is a bit better. The unknowns have excelled, and delivered a respectable - and most importantly characterful - tribute to a band they’ll never catch up with.

My Own Wolf: A New Approach To Ulver. That’s its name, and one can’t help but smile. Do Ulver need a new approach? Is anyone seriously capable of it? Hardly. As the metal quotient here shows, “a new approach” to ulver must necessarily be backward, or at least not very new at all. No matter what way you try to reinterpret or reconfigure, they’ll be one step ahead.

In trying to re-evoke Ulver’s ambiences and cityscapes though, these debutants deserve credit. On balance, this tribute is an excellent investment - and what’s more invigorating, a great starting point to go check out this clutch of hitherto unheard-of acts. All that, of course, before devouring the originals and being smitten all over again.

4.2/5 - Ciaran Tracey ::: 07/10/08