lauantai 25. lokakuuta 2014

Ugluk - Hveralundr demo 1993


Ugluk - Hveralundr demo I 1993 (1995 version)
1) Ar Var Alda
2) Nam Ekk Upp Runar
3) Moldina ok Blodit

Yandex

Today I'm posting another sending by Henri, thanks for all the hard work and this is the first and only demo by the Italian one-man project, the notorious if not infamous Ugluk. Cover scans are included and this is the Necrotorture 1995 release of the tape. I know there was a vinyl re-release made some (make it ten) years ago with a short extra track but as I haven't heard that one not going to comment.

We're straying from the viking black metal sub-theme a bit, but this is pretty much as Norwegian as an Italian band could get and received certainly a substantial amount of flak for that in the 'zines back in the day. Somewhat unfairly, I might add. Sure, it's an Italian one-man project (by Verminaard of From Depths, as a note) with a name taken from Tolkien that plays pretty much straight norsecore with lyrics in (old) Norwegian. Did I mention the sort of poor sound and slightly vague recording information (supposedly recorded in '93, the most common version was released in '95 and still saw it referred as demo '94 elsewhere)? But who am I to judge? Ok, in all honesty I tend to be very quick in passing sentence and casting stones, but I find myself enjoying this. Original? Surely not, even in its own era unless you count the novelty of Norwegian lyrics as that. Bad sound? Not really, I mean people were giving it crap for poor sound back then as the style of the times was shifting towards clean, produced, professional sound (crazy, wasn't it?) and this is lofi, muffled, imbalanced, repetitive and more "Transilvanian Hunger" than "In the Nightside Eclipse" even though the music itself would be a bit more inspired by Emperor than Darkthrone. Point fingers and laugh at it if you will, or enjoy the trip and embrace the peculiarities, I'm needed elsewhere now. Recommended but with caution.

4 kommenttia:

kingpossum kirjoitti...

No finger pointing here. Love these projects that Gollum sang on. The cheese factor here is high, and I'm good with that. And with the repetition, as I've blathered on about in the comments box before.

Thanks for the post.

Velkaarn kirjoitti...

@kingpossum:

Glad you liked it, like mentioned it was received rather harshly originally. I like the synths here.

F kirjoitti...

Found I have a flyer for this one as well, with something like "lyrics in Norwegian and Icelandic". I personally had a taste for this back when it was released, but even in the small local scene here, it was mocked for being sung in said languages. Like many things, we didn't care if the music was good or not - because it was BM it HAD to be true, because there were consequences otherwise...

Velkaarn kirjoitti...

@Fenrirsson:

Heh, I think I had that flyer too now that you mentioned it. As for the reaction of your local circle, sound familiar. Those were the days.