The new album, "The Assassination of Julius Caesar" marks another first in the extensive Ulver catalogue, being something of a psychedelic dance pop album, with sequenced drum machine beats throughout, topped with characteristically Scandinavian harmonized 'ethereal' vocals as heard on previous Ulver albums like "Blood Inside".  The fuzz-box basslines are identical to what you'd hear in countless New Wave derived danceable indie bands.  If you've heard NIN's "The Hand that Feeds", it's essentially the same groove and bass sound.

The most accessible moments of the album have blatant hooks, repeated sing-along choruses, like the opener "Nemoralia" with its refrain "Oooh, Nero lights up the night".  Songs like "Southern Gothic" (the best of the album) mimic the timbres and emotional affect of unabashedly melancholy and emotionally frank 80's pop; I hear echoes of Tears for Fears and The Cure in the sweet, rounded tenor.

Elsewhere on the disk, there are instrumental breaks of significant length, in which the cinematic intricacy of the accompaniment becomes apparent.  The album is lushly orchestrated, with many layers of synthesizer.  Bright, clear arpeggiated saw waves as heard so often in the 70's and 80's are generously heaped on, making for full, dramatic harmony.  Within the skillfully blended hierarchy of instruments, organs and pianos solidify the intelligent chord structure of the music, while guitar is typically used for simple but bold leads, often striking a colorful unison with the synth.  The extended jam passages of "Rolling Stone" have the wistful nostalgia of Pink Floyd, and begin to sound like krautrock as well when freeform feedback noise swirls and spirals around the steady rhythm.

The production of the dance beats falls a bit flat, to my ears, sticking to a basic palette of kick, hat and snare, without much variation, spacialization or distinctive character.  The samples used are standard house music fare.  This makes the danceability of the album seem a bit like a novelty, a gimmick, an experiment not fully fleshed out or realized.  The band is clearly limited by the rigidity of these featureless beats, and this is coming from a huge fan of electronic dance music.  Luckily, many other elements in the music provide the needed depth. 

The lyrical subject matter is often historical and/or mythological, peppered with the names of ancient deities, and references to specific dates ("18th to 19th of July" is repeated in one song).  All the specificity and name dropping tends to make the music sound stuffy and unrelatable.  This album lacks the emotional directness of the synth pop from which it draws inspiration, and comes off closer to a cheesy power metal concept album.  One would have to do some research to know who the characters in the story were, what part each supposedly played.  The vocalist has a clear, pure tone which is perfectly on pitch (although  possibly it is pitch corrected).  However, they seem to have an emotional distance from what they are saying.

This album has a lot of fluent musicality and melody on it, it is texturally beautiful, well paced and filled with the detail that guarantees good replay value.  Its failure lies is in its attitude; its wordy, overly referential lyrics are surely overthought, as are the many attempts to conjure bygone eras of 70's and 80's pop music.  The good music on this album exists in spite of this rather forced feeling change of identity.  Indeed, if Ulver opted to permanently shift to playing synth driven disco rock, they would be losing a large part of their distinct identity, and joining an ocean of faceless bands.  How many times must this this aesthetic be repackaged as a sharp, self aware new sound?  I can admire Ulver's attempts to create this style of music, but they have unfortunately proven that catchy hooks are not their forte.  They lack the lyrical ability to distill all the necessary emotions into brief, repeatable phrases.