Review
Ulver
Messe I.X - VI.X

It has been quite a time since one could easily quantify Ulver and what they do as a unit. Garm has made no secret that he remains generally uninterested in what Ulver began as and remains focussed on following whatever muse may take him. So for the early years when there was an emphasis on Black Metal to the middle years where their shift out of metal became more apparent to more recently shown by an album containing covers of classic psychedelic rock to their collaboration with Sunn 0))) the more things change the more they do stay the same. 

More recently The band recorded a pseudo live album with Arctic Opera and Philharmonic Orchestra. Allowing Ulver to be something different from anything they've been before. That is composers in the classical sense. If one was expecting metal of any sort you could be sadly mistaken instead you get a different kind of heavy something that envelopes the listener at points overtakes them and keeps them from caring what Ulver did before or what the name Ulver means to most music fans instead it offers something outside of their given genre something less based in noise and more in feeling. 

The songs build slowly giving the listener a spacial relationship with each instrument as they may come and go within the song. While not containing any traditional vocals the songs feel like an exercise in storytelling unto themselves. offering the opportunity to place ones own words and thoughts into a song while not bastardizing the overall feeling. That is something truly special and something that most music in general doesn't offer.