During their first fifteen years, Ulver never played live, with the exception of a single show in Oslo in 1993 where they played songs from their demo tape
Vargnatt, which contributed to the shaping of their musical legacy. Stig Sæterbakken finally persuading the band to play their first concert at the
Norwegian Festival of Literature in May 2009, fans came from all over the world – including Australia, Japan, Canada and the US. A national newspaper wrote on the band's concert at the Logen Theatre in Bergen, "The cult band hit us hard with suggestive music. Ulver is one of the few bands which can move from pictures of Jesus to sex, burlesque and atom bombs without making you jump. The music alone is too powerful for anything to make you more flabbergasted." Malcolm Dome, writing for Classic Rock Magazine, commented, "Ulver's presentation is surreal and stark. A psychedelic excursion, an immersive experience, fuelled by haunting, progressive art. After such a night, you don't want to see another band for a few days. Because anything else would pale when put alongside Ulver." Mojo writer, Phil Alexander, added, "In many respects, Ulver epitomise what happens when metal's melancholic strand is taken to its logical conclusion. While the band's roots lie in clattering black metal, their evolution began with the release of 1998's openly progressive ''
Themes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell''. By the time they'd got to
Shadows of the Sun, they'd wandered still further away from their gnashing early work, sitting at the remote, windswept crossroads of art-rock, ambient adventurism, improvisational noise, and the hymnal aspects of modern classical music." == Critical reception ==