Ulver - bergtatt shirt (my teen years)

This shirt I own features art relating to an album I had as a teenager that was very influential to me in becoming the person I am today and what drives my inspirations in fantasy/classical art, the love for nature, my interest in metal music, and my creative purpose in life. I would not be who I am today without this music.

I actually had Bergtatt as a teen. I saw the album cover on Lost Souls Domain back in 2000 and fell in love with it immediately. I knew not much about getting cds at the time on the internet and I had no idea what the music was like either only that is was metal. My local music store could not order it. Amazon did not appear to have it available. Eventually I had to go on a trip out of state for a family function. And I learned by using the phone book to make calls that a cd store in that state had the album. When I got it back then I really felt like I was getting something very very rare and hard to find. And this was the 3rd black metal album I had ever heard (with Dimmu Borgir and Summoning being my only experience outside of goth metal). It was shocking to say the least at the time. Yet Garm's voice and the beautiful folk elements kept me listening. And of course the evocative album cover....

Now I enjoy black metal as one of my musical mainstays. Got this shirt back in 2007 for 40 dollars. It was very important to me.

Ulver's music speaks to me of nature at its most sombre and most glorious. It feels like a gray mountainside covered in trees on a gray cloudy day when nothing but cold spring downpours ravage the mountainous wilderness. And then they mythological aspect of it too. The woman in the album is swept up into the dark woods to meet the true supernals of nature and be slain by them. There are some of us who would want to join her in her fate. We want to be part of the mythic universe again.