ULTRA SILVAM “The Sanctity of Death”
By Dr. Abner Mality
Black metal has forgotten a lot of the wildness and unpredictability of its formative years and many BM bands these days are locked into a particular sound with rigidity. Not ULTRA SILVAM from Sweden. With “The Sanctity of Death”, they’ve come up with an untamed kind of black metal that draws from a lot of different sources, like early German thrash metal and even some sleazy rock elements. It keeps the listener in a state of wondering what’s going to happen next.
“Dies Irae” kicks things off with wild speed and screaming guitar solos bombarding from every angle...I can hear DESTRUCTION’s “Sentence of Death” here, but that style is merged with classic early 90’s Scandinavian black metal. Lots of cool riff changes and there’s more to come, as “Sodom Vises Himlafard” blasts with classic “freezing fire” trebly guitar that sounds 90’s to the core, like DISSECTION meeting GORGOROTH. These guys never sit still or are content to have the same basic riff throughout a song...things are nervously shifting like thoughts in the brain of a severely disturbed person.
That’s the template for the whole album, which can come up with some surprisingly melodic and majestic tones amidst the mayhem. The album is a good, unpredictable listen all the way through and a throwback to those early days when first wave and second wave black metal coexisted.