Themes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: Difference between revisions

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Themes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is the fourth studio album by Norwegian experimental collective Ulver. Produced with Kristoffer Rygg, together with Knut Magne Valle and Tore Ylwizaker, it was issued on December 17, 1998 via Jester Records. It is a musical setting of William Blake's poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’’. The album blended electronics, industrial music elements, progressive metal and avant-garde rock, adding ambient passages, following Blake's plates as track indexes. Stine Grytøyr, Ihsahn, Samoth and Fenriz all feature as guest vocalists.

The album received widespread acclaim from critics within both the rock/metal and alternative music press - being awarded ‘album of the month’ in several high-profile magazines such as Terrorizer, Metal Hammer, and Rock Hard and ranked very highly in their end of year's best polls. However, the album’s transitional nature perhaps alienated many fans of the band’s first three albums - causing a backlash from the black metal scene.

The controversial director of films Kids and Gummo, Harmony Korine, recently commented, alluding to The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: "There's a real lineage from a composer like Wagner to a band like Ulver."

Background

In late 1997, Kristoffer Rygg invited keyboardist, sound conceptualist, and composer Tore Ylwizaker into the collective, and together they created a strategy for The Blake Album. Musically, the album transcended black metal’s aesthetics to create a genre-defying work and employed everything from ambient and classical sounds to industrial, prog metal, and art rock. The title alone being a loud signal that Ulver had changed somewhat.

“For me,” says Garm, “the [Blake record kind of signifies the second chapter or the new beginning – newer if you will – and not only from an ideological or lyrical perspective, but also musically because by that time I had acquired knowledge on technology and how to work with software and computers so we kind of had the knowledge to do new things with music. In a way it’s quite natural that we wanted to explore other things almost from the beginning, which I think the second album, Kveldssanger, is a good example of. So we were never, like, strictly into black metal. It’s actually pretty natural. I think a lot of people tend to think of it as very weird or very strange that the focus shifted so radically, but I don’t.”

The album and the band in general got a great deal of back-lash from the black metal community for abruptly changing musical styles, though the band expressly claimed to not be part of the "so-called black metal scene" in the liner notes of the booklet. While genre purists were taken aback by the violation of their boundaries, a new audience now discovered the band.

The shift in musical direction caused a certain amount of discord between Kristoffer Rygg and German label Century Media, resulting in the band being dropped from the roster and Rygg forming his own imprint, Jester Records.

Critical Reception

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	link
Sputnikmusic	link

Themes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell met with critical acclaim at the time of its release, with most reviewers commenting on the drastic change in musical direction, and the ambitious nature of setting William Blake's poem to music.

Writing for AllMusic, Jason Hundy commented, “Every single album they put out is almost a complete 180 from the last, which, although strange, is a very admirable quality to this band, and Marriage is no different. Between the eerie music, awkward vocals, and mysterious religious lyrics, this album has everything for the eccentric fans out in metal-land.”

Oliver Side, writing for avantgarde-metal.com, comments, “[The Blake Album is] clearly a great step outside what they previously had been associated with, namely black metal. The whole double-album is very genre-schizophrenic, as there are also more moody, almost ambient-like acoustic tracks, and all the musical focus is put on each of Blake’s inspirational shifts of emotions, so it basically changes all the time.”

Webzine Metal Reviews, concludes “Themes From William Blake's The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell may be messy and perhaps a little too ambitious for it's own good, but yet it prevails because it's so damn brave. A complete musical reboot, and as such it has it's flaws. As their peers floundered around them, Ulver took flight, and if they hadn't chosen to abandon metal entirely, they may not have even existed today.”

Reviewer John Chedsey commented, “The shift into yet another musical realm should come as no surprise to anyone who has kept tabs on this group of musicians. Ulver's artistic vision extends beyond simply the area where they began.”

Given this diversity, the response from the metal media came highly unexpected: 10/10 points in Rock Hard (D); 7/7 points and Album of the Month in Hammer Magazine (D); Album of the Month in Terrorizer (UK); 15/15 in Deftone (D); 15/15 in Legacy (D); 10/10 in Psycho (IT); and 12/12 in Thrash'em All (POL).

Track listing

All lyrics are written by William Blake.

Disc 1

No.	Title	Length
1.	"The Argument, Plate 2"	4:03
2.	"Plate 3"	2:48
3.	"Plate 3, Following"	1:33
4.	"The Voice of the Devil, Plate 4"	2:49
5.	"Plates 5-6"	2:31
6.	"A Memorable Fancy, Plates 6–7"	4:24
7.	"Proverbs of Hell, Plates 7–10"	9:06
8.	"Plate 11"	2:01
9.	"Intro"	3:26
10.	"A Memorable Fancy, Plates 12–13"	5:59
11.	"Plate 14"	2:08
12.	"A Memorable Fancy, Plate 15"	4:51
13.	"Plates 16–17"	3:17

Disc 2

No.	Title	Length
1.	"A Memorable Fancy, Plates 17–20"	11:23
2.	"Intro"	2:27
3.	"Plates 21–22"	3:11
4.	"A Memorable Fancy, Plates 22–24"	4:50
5.	"Intro"	3:59
6.	"A Song of Liberty, Plates 25–27" (featuring Ihsahn, Samoth and Fenriz.)	26:23

Credits

• Trickster G. – Generation, engineering, Producer
• Tore Ylwizaker - Programming, engineering, mix, Co-Producer
• Håvard Jørgensen – Guitars
• E. Lancelot – Drums
• Hugh Steven James Mingay - Bass guitar
• Knut Magne Valle - Cables, wires & various sound contributions, engineering, Co-Producer
• Stine Grytøyr "Her" - Female voice
• Falch - Vinyl scratching
• Ihsahn - "A Song Of Liberty" 1-7, Conclusion
• Samoth - "A Song Of Liberty" 7-11
• Fenriz - "A Song Of Liberty" 25-27
• Børge Finstad – Mix
• Audhild Johanne Rype - Mastering
• Lamin Nilsen Chorr - Aesthetics