Ultralyd – Inertiadrome

October 18, 2010 • Rune Grammofon

I don't talk about record labels much, but I gotta say that I do have a lot of respect for Rune Grammofon. I imagine it must be difficult to base your entire business around avant-garde Norwegian music, but they've managed to not only do so but to also generate a good-size cult following. Just about everything I've heard from them (which isn't a lot, but still) has been at least interesting, if not really good. Ultralyd falls more into the "interesting" category—they have a decent sound but don't really do enough for me to consider them "really good".

On the surface, Inertiadrome sounds great. The math-rock-ish, polyrhythmic drumming is carefully executed to good effect, and the growling bass is quite good as well; the two complement each other perfectly. Screeching guitar and saxophone lines accentuate the rhythm well, although every now and again I find myself yearning for some sort of hook to take a break from all the squealing feedback. We finally get one in the final track—a bit too late for me—and it clicks in pretty nicely.

The biggest issue I have with the album then, of course, is the writing. The entire thing suffers very badly from repetition, which is obviously quite a problem with just five long tracks. Each one is the same groove repeated more or less the whole length, with the occasional bars of fill to break them up. I suppose that anyone not paying close attention won't really notice, but I was, and I did. I hesitate to criticize too harshly because the repeated parts were mostly pretty interesting at first, but it would have been more enjoyable if every track was cut in half, at least.

So I think ultimately this album fails for me not because it is unoriginal, or it sounds bad, or the musicians didn't mesh, or anything like that... those things were all fine. Simply put, it is too boring. I won't say I didn't find some enjoyment in it, but it just wasn't enough to keep me engaged for all forty minutes. I don't want to dissuade anyone from checking out Ultralyd's material, but this is not the place to start.

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