Metal Reviews

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Great review, always nice to find someone who agrees that metal (indeed, any kind of music) should not have to adhere to established structure. Anyone who bashes this band/album for not being "metal" enough is completely fucking retarded.

I agree with you here, crispy. Music should really be free of boundaries, and metal is quite possibly one of the most conservative genres around. But just to play devil's advocate, whilst it is Ulver's prerogative to play whatever the hell they want, would you actually describe this as a "metal" album? Having heard only a couple of tracks from Blood Inside, I am not sure this is the case.

Having said that, I am still glad it was reviewed here. Firstly because it was made by Ulver. And secondly, because I have always viewed Metalreviews.com as- not a place to read reviews of metal records- but to read reviews of records written by metal fans.

As for my opinion (based on hearing Christmas and not much else so far), while I applaud what they are trying to achieve, I don't think they did an especially good job of it with this track.

However I will definitely try to hear some more, and would welcome having my mind changed.

Good review for an excellent album.

As said on the review, this album is not Metal at all...

I gave it a 75, I enjoyed it, but I just can't really get into it that much.


get on MSN daniel. 8)

75 means it's very good :twisted:

I gave it 80 as it's, indeed, a very good album... but not a metal album, more like a modern prog rock album... :roll:

Indeed not. Suppose what I meant to imply was that, while we have agreed there should be no set conventions or boundaries governing metal music, if a band like Ulver wants to make music this "experimental", then they are forced to leave metal behind to do it.

hummm... I'll have to disagree... Fantomas is very experimental but still has a lot of metal to it... then, bands like Cynic or Voivod managed to push the boundaries of metal further than anybody could have thought... in fact, it all depends on how you define metal... :roll:

Yes you are right here. I have always regarded Fantomas as a metal band.

But then this reminds me of the diversity in jazz vs diversity in metal thread we had with WiC. ( :roll: ) We can, of course, change the way we percieve metals boundaries, but overall I think no matter how much this may alter, we will always have a set of specific guidelines that unite even fantomas or cynic with the rest of the metal crowd. That is why I think Ulver decided to move away from it entirely.

Btw re: your sig, If any of Deathspell Omega want to fight me, bring it on!! :twisted:

Now I'm off to metal-achives to find a picture and see if they are intimidating.

Both Stefan and Rio are right.

Metal can be quite avantgarde-ish as Stefan said; proof of it are bands like Cynic and Fantômas.

Rio is right too when saying that Ulver wanted to something so different, that they stoped being Metal, and if you think about it, it's quite logical. All genres have certain "guidelines" which make it possible to classify bands, if a band starts breaking some of these boundaries or guidelines, they stop fitting the mold and become another genre.

Even so, I would consider that Ulver's skelleton or main elements on this album were more electronica than Metal, and that their goal was never to create a Metal album.

i heard it, definately a good album. and a good review, but i-m used to those already.

and much better than thhose albums full of usleess static which made people say "ohhh how original, it-s, er, hipnotizing, uh uh uh, transecendent, uh let-s masturbate to this".

rock on!

I love this cd. It's been playing for nigh 3 days.

My current obsession. Way out of my ordinary musical taste, but there's just something about Blood Inside that's marvellous.

This is a really good and important point and is what makes this site so great. Good observation. Just picked this album up and im loving it already, though i get the feeling its going to grow on me even more so.