Ultan’s single, “The Tempest,” erupts not so much into the room as it does through the floorboards, dragging with it the scent of wet wool and imminent confrontation. This Dublin solo musician, a cartographer of past agonies, presents an energetic rock piece that feels less like a song about history and more like a fragment of it, throbbing and urgent. The main riff careers about like a berserker who’s just discovered a double espresso – a frenetic, guitar-driven pulse under lyrics painting a truly monumental struggle against a colossal, gathering storm.
The atmosphere here is thick enough to spread on very burnt toast, all crisis and grim anticipation. It’s the human angle of these historical clashes, particularly those Middle Age battles, that Ultan seems to nail to the castle door. Are these figures, poised for oblivion, truly grasping they’re cogs in some grand, epoch-defining machine? Or is it all just mud, the pervasive fear, and a desperate hope for… well, for not this? It makes one ponder the sheer weight of a shield, not just in its physical pounds, but in the destiny it deflects or absorbs. For a fleeting second, the guitar’s cry, sharp and keening, almost sounded like the collective groan of the Bayeux Tapestry’s stitched figures as it’s unrolled in a very, very windy medieval hall.
This track explores that teetering point: the razor’s edge between holding fast and being utterly swept away. There’s profound sacrifice etched into its DNA, the foreknowledge that lives will be spilt like cheap wine, yet an undercurrent of startling resilience insists on being heard. It’s not triumphant in a fist-pumping, banner-waving way; it’s the sound of gritted teeth, of a resolve hardened in the fires of knowing the full, bitter cost. The human spirit, eh? What a stubborn, almost incandescent little flicker it can be, refusing to be snuffed out by the howling gales of fate.
“The Tempest” doesn’t just play; it demands. It leaves you feeling like you’ve just run an emotional gauntlet, slightly breathless, and then makes you question the nature of your own, perhaps quieter, but no less significant, battles. When the storm truly hits our own lives, what is it, exactly, that we find ourselves clutching so tightly?
