ULVER

There may be a few petty purists still bemoaning ULVER's abandonment of black metal in the late '90s, but everybody else has been reveling in the Norwegians' eclectic ethos for decades. The most imaginative and fearless band to emerge from their country's native black metal scene, Kristoffer Rygg and his amorphous comrades have never allowed their fans to relax. Since the release of pioneering post-rock adventures like 1998's "Themes From William Blake's The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell" and 2000's trip-hop-adjacent "Perdition City", ULVER have been determined shapeshifters, dedicated to bending all manner of musical styles to their own deviant ends. In recent times, they have released a series of records that plumbed the atmospheric depths of synth-pop and dark electronica: in particular, 2020's "Flowers Of Evil" was a dazzling display of skewed retro-futurism, full of smart, unnervingly original songs that threatened to elbow their way into mainstream realms.

Now, in a typically low-key and counter-intuitive move, ULVER have changed focus yet again. Sneaking a new album out in the dead time between Christmas and New Year might not seem like the most commercially wise decision, but if anyone had any doubt that this band exist outside of all the usual restrictions and guidelines, "Neverland" proves otherwise. An enthralling amalgam of late '90s IDM, shimmering, liberated ambience, and mysterious, intrinsically progressive, post-everything elegance, the fifteenth ULVER album is an immersive, otherworldly delight.

For a band that has been instinctively esoteric for a long time, "Neverland" still seems remarkably original. Much like "Perdition City", these largely instrumental pieces exist in a hazy world of malformed nature and transient concrete, as the dividing lines between objective reality and surreal fantasy are inexorably blurred. Less bound by the brutalist edges and harsh lines of shadowy city life, and more by the cool breeze of new days and the vivid hopes of ecological rebellion, tracks like "Fear In A Handful Of Dust" and "Elephant Trunk" belong to the fever dreams of perpetual mavericks than they do to anything more conservative or familiar.

Everything here, glitchy drum machines and scorching synths included, feels considerably more organic and spontaneous than a thousand traditional black metal records, and while "Neverland" has little in the way of actual songs, it still brims with melodic touches and moments of fragile beauty. There are moments of disquiet, too: both "Weeping Stone" and "Quivers In The Marrow" squeeze the last drops of menace from their surging synths, bilious bass and careful, meandering gaits, as this prolonged journey through oddball utopias makes occasional, willful stops at foggy checkpoints along the way. Elsewhere, "People Of The Hills" and "Welcome To The Jungle" sink their teeth into brighter, more blissful textures, evoking memories of electronica acts like BOARDS OF CANADA, and throwing up slender, connective tissue between "Neverland" and ULVER's recent, synth-pop excursions.

In its mesmerizing entirety, "Neverland" is quite the trip. Frustratingly brief at only 42 minutes, a cynic might argue that ULVER could have taken this detour further and further away from the expected, but that is a minor quibble, and one that evaporates as this edgy but gorgeous record draws you into its glistening tailwinds.