Review: Ulvegr “Titahion Kaos Manifest”

Ulvegr “Titahion Kaos Manifest”
Ashen Dominion

Well, I have a problem with ULVEGR. It was formed in 2009 by two guys from Kharkov in eastern Ukraine – guitarist and vocalist Helg together with drummer Odalv. Theoretically they still are the only members here, so in my opinion it’s a project. But they play gigs and then there’s two additional member – Nort (bass) and Cult (voc). So since 2010 when they joined ULVEGR to give possibility of playing gigs it’s a real band. But since music is what’s the most important here let’s leave this quite futile advisement.

It seems that guys work hard and treat seriously their child, becauseduring these six and an half years we got four albums (“Titahion Kaos Manifest” is the fourth one) and one EP recorded soon after birth of a band as well. Anyway, their newest full-length contains nine songs and takes a little more than forty four minutes. As many of you probably thought after reading the band’s name, these guys play Black Metal. But if somebody thinks that this is another creature which’s another clone of some Norwegian band then here is a little surprise.

I don’t want to say that Ukrainians play something unique, edge-cutting, etc. I mean, there’re some fragments of music which people who don’t like Black Metal would describe as typical hodgepodge, but honestly they’re in vast minority. Mostly we have here to do with more atmospheric (don’t mistake or Atmospheric) playing. It’s in general in middle-slow tempo and the guys play variable and technically, especially as on Black Metal. And of course there’re some speed-ups. To be honest they happen even often and are rather long.

Riffs aren’t something complicated and there’re moments (in “She, Who Grants Suffering” for example) where they’re quite changeless. But even then Helg doesn’t trot out the same one, to boot in the same key. Sometimes I hear in them ”Bloodcult. Initiation.”, but not only, something “unblack”, but personally I can’t see anything strange in that because Oleg played in his life not only Black Metal. By the way, the same is about Grigoriy Sevruk who plays here drums. Even in those faster parts which somebody could recognize as typical Black ones his beating is “unblack” in some point. He changes tempo of that, he makes some passages – maybe not so often and in subtle way, but anyway. And I’d like to have more cymbals here. However, Helg’s vocal is by all means in standards of such music. But it absolutely isn’t any cracked voice or stuff like that!

Personally I like this album (the most of all which they released, I think). It’s not something what prostrated me, but I listen to “Titahion: Kaos Manifest” with pleasure. One of songs is totally different than another ones – it’s in some way even darker than another eight ones.