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Heavy guitar, a solid and melodic singer, occasional odd-metered rhythms, intricate compositions… enticing? It certainly got my attention. If only their record label had their head on straight. I was lucky enough to see Pulse Ultra live at Ozzfest in 2002, but they were dropped when Atlantic Records merged with AOL/Time/Warner. Despite the metric oriented decisions made at record labels, Pulse Ultra’s only major release, Head Space (2002), is one of my favorite albums. In fact, this album has three tracks about 10 plays shy of hitting my 25 most played tracks in iTunes.
Pulse Ultra is the only band introduced to me by Ozzfest that intrigued me enough to actually make a purchase. That’s not to say I thought all Ozzfest bands sucked… it was just rare for the bands playing on the side stage to be both unknown to me and good. I think the biggest problem was that Pulse Ultra didn’t really belong at Ozzfest. They didn’t really fit in with bands like Otep (not to be confused with Opeth), Meshugga, Drowning Pool, etc. This was just the wrong crowd for them to be fully appreciated. Pulse Ultra had a well balanced mix of intricate arrangements and accessibility. Unfortunately, those kinds of bands rarely hit it off on their first album without help from a better known band to carry them at first.
Let’s get to the music. I’d love to describe the music in more detail than I already have, but Pulse Ultra is too unique to be able to say they sound like so-and-so mixed with so-and-so and a hint of awesome. So you’ll just have to settle with the description of they sound like awesome. They’re hard, but not heavy. They’re intricate, but not flashy. And none of their tracks make you think you just heard it. I’m pretty sure they had a single on the radio, Build Your Cages, and the Ozzfest 2002 Streetwise Summer Sampler had Slip N Sin. That exposure just wasn’t enough though. I’ve only ever met one other person that had heard of Pulse Ultra that didn’t find out about them through me (if you recall, I used that same line in the Shun post, but it’s true here regardless). By the way… Evan, if you call me out on using regardless instead of irregardless, I will cat-stamp you. Look it up in the dictionary, they mean the same thing… except irregardless is informal. Much like this post has become. My bickerings with my college roommate aside… check out Pulse Ultra. They may have broken up a few years ago, but you can still get their album online. The audio clip below contains Slip N Sin and Despot. I really liked Never the Culprit more, but I’m hoping Slip N Sin will jog some memories since it was a single. Plus, Never the Culprit is on their MySpace page, as wells the full versions of all the other songs mentioned in this post.
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