Rehearsal 1993

This rehearsal is probably the earliest material from ulver you'll get a hold of, and in my humble opinion it is surprisingly also the best... The recording quality is of course sub-garage, there is only one guitar plus drums, no song or bass, but the songs presented here show much promise, more than the group ever did in fact...

At this point in the bands history the group would probably consist of Garm and Carl Michael Eide, and Carl Michaels presence on this rehearsal is very notable. For those not familiar with the name, this is the man that would later found Aura Noir and Ved Buens Ende. The drumming is instantly recognizable and very unlike ulvers usually more shy style. Carl Michael remains one of my favourite drummers in metal, and even on this early rehearsal he demonstrates great skill and inventiveness behind the set. It is of course impossible for me to know, but i would also think he had a good deal to do with the song-material here... The riffs are quite unique, and a bit hard to describe. Take Darkthrone, Celtic Frost and Voivod, throw in a good portion of melodic folk-music and you may get an idea... It is here we also find the greatest problem with the material on this tape, it can sometimes be a little TOO varied... The widely different influences don't always go together as seemlessly as you would have wished. Beautiful solemn parts are suddenly interrupted by a quick burst of blastbeats, to be relieved by yet another slow set of picked guitar... But it really feels unfair to come down on this release, as it still is nothing more than a rehearsal tape (given the quality of the songs you sometimes forget), and the artists were very young at the time of recording. For what it is, this tape is excellent.

And what happened after this very promising first taste of Ulver? Of course it went the wrong way. Already on the Vargnatt demo these songs have been dressed up with silly, blarring and unpleasant esthetics... Pointless clean guitars over riffs that stood strong on their own, very annoying clean vocals etc. etc... Garms stuff is often too sugar sweet and overly romantic for my tastes, and the vargnatt demo was a step in his desired direction, im sure...

Ulver in general has never counted for much in my book. I used to listen to Bergtatt when i was a teenager, but it's passed on to the dusty depths of my collection long ago. If i want to listen to Ulver nowadays, i listen to this tape. It's inventive without sounding "innovation for innovations sake" or becoming silly like many other ulver releases do. It is excellent for a rehearsal and sadly very overlooked. It's a pity that the promise that this tape gave never was fulfilled on a fullength record.

Ulver only did two recordings before their monumental release "Bergatt." Those two recordings were the "Vargnatt" demo and this untitled rehearsal. The rehearsal proposes to have versions of songs that would be on "Vargnatt," but what they turn out to be are almost jam versions of those songs, similar to Darkthrone's demos and rehearsals which presented a strange jam band atmosphere to death and black metal classics.
The songs do not have voices, and instead are very loose creations that at times are similar to "Vargnatt's" tracks, probably the only time Ulver has ever allowed themselves to be recorded a second time with a similar sound. This is unique but nothing special. Much like "Vargnatt," these recordings do not have the same amazing ability to transform the listeners enviroment into the Norwegian landscape like their first trilogy of releases.
Perhaps important for fans of the band, as it provides an insight into the early world of Norwegian metal, but nothing too important.