Have you ever been really, really hungry, and just craved a good old fashioned piece of meat between two pieces of perfectly complementary bread? Well, let's say we take a trip down to the old black metal burger barn, and you order a nice, big piece of Ulcus. Now, you've never tried this Ulcus burger before, but the Windir is great and you've heard that they took some of the elements of the Ulcus burger and added it to the Windir. It looks great, comes with everything you normally like on your burger, and, because of the success of the meaty and perfect Windir, you're really looking forward enjoying it to its fullest. So, you order your Ulcus burger, take your plate back to your seat, and begin ingesting this nice meaty piece of keyboard infested black metal. However, you start to realize something's just not right with the whole experience, something that the Windir lacked but of which the Ulcus just had too much. There's just too much god damn bread. How am I able to enjoy my lovely piece of greasy symphonic black metal meat with all this damn bread? It's simple. Eat around it.
Welcome to Ulcus's first and last full-length album,
Cherish the Obscure. Almost all elements of a good symphonic black metal record are here, a clean and well produced guitar tone, good, solid drumming, and a heavy dose of inventive and interesting keyboard melodies and leads. But, just like the fated Ulcus burger from the black metal burger barn, there's just too much god damn bread. What I mean by too much bread is that
Cherish the Obscure packs wonderfully meaty and filling mid-album tracks into a packaging of completely uninspired and dull opening and closing songs. It's almost enough to throw a listener completely off in the first ten minutes. The meat of Ulcus's production, or rather tracks three through seven, embodies all of what you might come to expect of the album as a whole, interesting keyboard hooks, good drumming, a nice dose of raining keyboard atmosphere, and perfectly complimentary and interesting guitar riffs. Even the vocals, which seem to lack a bit in the opening and closing areas, seem to sound cleaner and fit better into the overall mix during the meat of the record. Tracks like The Profound Power (which can actually be heard re-recorded and redone by Windir on Valfar's tribute album, Valfar, Ein Windir) and Malice are brilliant, combining every element perfectly to achieve what the album as a whole should have been shooting for. Sadly, the brilliance of the center of the album is almost overshadowed by the lack of effort displayed on the openers and closers.
With a sound more akin to the early days of Dimmu Borgir than to quintessential black metal acts like Emperor or Gehenna, Ulcus's
Cherish the Obscure displays a central core of brilliance while ruining its credibility with uninspired closing and opening tracks. Although, it's easy to see why Valfar got along musically with the members of Ulcus, his mater crafting hand was able to trim the edges of their ideas and incorporate a relatively juvenile style of songwriting into his experienced and thought out ideas in Windir.
Cherish the Obscure is a dish best served in increments, and without the extra helping of wheaty complex carbohydrates. Approach with care, for the meat of this meal just might catch your interest.
