{"id":228591,"date":"2026-01-04T17:07:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T16:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.angrymetalguy.com\/?p=228591"},"modified":"2026-01-04T18:55:31","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T17:55:31","slug":"ulver-neverland-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.angrymetalguy.com\/ulver-neverland-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Ulver – Neverland Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Happy New Year, ya filthy animals! How about we usher in this stupid year with something that came out on literally the last day of 2025. That’s right, a nice, breezy slice of industrial synthwave and ambient melancholy that sounds like something you’d hear from the radio on a cruisin’ Miami drive, but on like a miserably<\/em> gloomy day. Which, if you’re familiar with Ulver<\/strong>, the purveyor of today’s jams, is equal parts straight outta left field and yet also predictable. Ulver<\/strong>, the group that authored a smattering of quintessential<\/a> 90’s Norwegian black metal albums, has since nestled snugly into a restless kaleidoscope of melancholic, avant-garde music that ranges from synthpop, industrial, ambient, acoustic folk, and so on. The Ulver <\/strong>brand is built on consistent unpredictability, each new album a bold new frontier, and Ulver<\/strong>’s newest album, Neverland<\/em>, continues this tradition.<\/p>\n

Neverland <\/em>shifts across a diverse range of moods through its runtime, never quite landing on a single tonal descriptor I might comfortably use to pigeonhole Neverland<\/em>, which was surely the intention. It’s at times mysterious, brooding, and melancholic, and defiantly optimistic, musically manifesting in a variety of ways. There’s a strong emphasis on richly textured ambiance (“Weeping Stone,” “Horses of the Plough”), there’s a lot of glitchy industrial beats (“They\u2019re Coming! The Birds!\u201d and \u201cHark! Hark! The Dogs Do Bark!\u201d), and the highlight comes in funky, percussive synthwave (“People of the Hills,” “Fire in the End”). It’s worth noting that apart from some spoken poetry in the opener, Neverland <\/em>is, in practice, a fully instrumental affair. It’s easy to miss Kristoffer Rygg’s vocals, which were always a highlight of any Ulver <\/strong>record, but Neverland <\/em>is specifically written in a way that wouldn’t work with vocals. Neverland <\/em>effectively utilizes free-form compositions, eschewing a structure that would benefit from vocals and focusing on the strength and depth of the musicality.<\/p>\n