Towards Ragnarok

Burzum – Dauði Baldrs

And with Dauði Baldrs we have finally made it through the entire Burzum catalogue to date. This record is the second to last that Varg released, and the first one he made in prison. The melodies are of the same stock as those from Burzum's older black metal albums but due to production concerns (the only instrument Varg is allowed in prison is a synthesiser) this album is entirely devoid of drums and guitars.

Dauði Baldrs is less ambient and minimal than it's successor Hliðskjálf; indeed the songs are straight up black metal performed sans vocals and with different instrumentation (one track is even melodically a straight up copy of an earlier black metal styled song), but I can't avoid making the same comparison as I did when I listened to the latter album - that this stuff sounds a hell of a lot like Coil. The chiming bells and spacey strings of 'Hermoðr Á Helferð' sound almost exactly like those on Coil's 'Titan Arch'. Burzum's interest in the occult is another similarity shared with those post industrial hedonists, and where the earlier black metal albums evoked the dark, gothic northern European wilderness, Dauði Baldrs has more of an abstract, mystical mood.

The songs suffer a little from the lack of vocals. Without them a standard black metal song is too simple and repetitive, and stripping away the distortion and feralness and replacing it with synth strings and horns only emphasises the fact that, for all his originality in developing the style of black metal, Varg's songs aren't actually that interesting in and of themselves.

It's been interesting to see how he influenced and in fact set a standard for the genre but other than Filosofem I don't think I'll be revisiting this music all that much. After all, even I feel a little bit uncomfortable listening to the work of a murderous neo-nazi.

Black Throne

Burzum – Det Som Engang Var

There's not a lot to say about Burzum's second album that I haven't already said about their first and third. Sludgy guitars knocking out diminished fifth happy riffs and drums that sound like they were recorded in a goblin filled cavern provide the backdrop for screechy lead guitars reciting slowed down, cheesy Scandanavian metal melodies and Varg's ghastly (and I mean that in a positive way) gurgles and growls.

It's worth noting again that the production is excellent. Black metal is supposed to be stripped down and raw, almost to the point of indecipherability, but unlike many bands who slip right past that point of good taste Varg knows just how grungy to make it sound without compromising the melody and rhythm of the music for the sake of texture. It's even more impressive that (he claims) he recorded it himself in less than a day.

It is a cool aesthetic and when Varg finds a good riff or interesting song idea to hang it on it works really well, but less than half the tracks out of this album's eight songs fulfil this promise. One of my favourites is the opening track 'Den Onde Krysten' ('The Evil Shores') which is a nice scrapey, droney ambient industrial track which is a good fit to the work of Coil or Jordan Reyne (in fact, I'm sure I've heard the backing synth line sampled on an industrial album somewhere...). It's a pity he doesn't do more of this kind of thing because in my opinion he's much better at it than straight up black metal.

I also quite like 'En Ring Til Aa Herske' ('One Ring To Rule'), which combines the usual black metal conventions with a sorrowful backing chant as a nice counterpoint to Varg's usual howling. This song's title is far from the only embarassing fantasy reference to be found here. According to Wikipedia Det Som Engang Var's cover was inspired by the old Dungeons and Dragons module The Temple of Elemental Evil. NEEEEEEEEEEEEEERD!

On the Blood Red Snowy Ground

Burzum – Burzum/Aske

You may recall that some time ago I wrote about Burzum's most recent album Hildskalf (insert your own arbitrary germanic character accents). Burzum is the work of the infamous Varg Vikarnes, considered the godfather of black metal mainly for being one of the first to define the genre's current sound (even though he considers most of the current practitioners to be posers and sellouts) but also for walking the walk in regards to the antisocial behaviour expected of a trve black metaller (i.e. the church burning, the satanism/paganism, the murder, the neo-Nazism and so on).

As it happens Hildskalf was not in any way a black metal album so I went back to his first release (actually his first two EPs concatenated onto a single album) which is more or less a textbook example of the genre. Probably because these early Burzum albums are the textbooks which later black metallers composed by.

Seminal as this album may be, it's not much more than an average listen. Varg's vocals are impressive, being one of the few examples I've heard of the standard black metal howl/gurgle that doesn't sound stupid, and the music, which is so stripped back as to be almost punk in some ways, is agreeable but in no way inspiring enough to justify this guy's inflated reputation. However there are a couple of ambient/industrial tracks included which I quite liked (especially 'Dungeons of Darkness', rattley, scrapey goodness!). I suspect that this album and Hildskalf are not his best works so I shall continue on with the other albums.

Varg claims to have recorded the whole thing in seventeen hours and played all the instruments himself (save for a guest guitar solo on 'War' by, you guessed it, Euronymous, the dude Varg is currently in jail for killing). That's quite impressive (If it's true that is. It must be borne in mind that this comes from the guy who says things like “I'm not a Nazi because I don't believe in 'national socialism'” and “I was framed for the murder! The police said that they found my fingerprints on the knife, but I wore gloves when I killed him!”) and even I, lover of over produced technical death metal, have respect for the purism of his back to basics, one take (mistakes and all) approach, and the fact that he made such a professional sounding album even within those constraints.

Vikings Were Born To Fight And To Kill For Pleasure

Burzum – Hliðskjálf

When I wrote about Mayhem's De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas a few weeks back I made reference to their insane bass player Varg Vikernes, a.k.a Count Grishnackh. As well as being a murderer he also likes to burn down churches (at one point making himself responsible for the death of a fireman) and although he doesn't like being described as a Nazi, he is a white supremacist. Despite such unpleasant attributes he's widely respected in black metal circles, mostly on the strength of his solo project Burzum.

Burzum is often described as 'ambient black metal', which would seem to me to be an oxymoron, but I will refrain from judging until I've heard more of this stuff. Hliðskjálf is completely ambient, without a trace of metal (apparently this is because he's not allowed guitars or drums in prison). This album has more in common with the mellower kinds of industrial than anything metal. In fact it reminded me rather a lot of Coil in their more restrained moments.

The music is very gentle and delicate, most songs are just one or two vaguely medieval sounding synthesised instruments playing over a subdued ambient background. It's quite a nice album, although it has nothing on Coil's Musick to Play in the Dark or Jordan Reyne's The Loneliest of Creatures. I would hazard a guess that it's inflated reputation mostly comes from closeted metal fiends who've never heard it's like before. But it's still worthwhile, even just to make you wonder how such pretty music can be made by such a horrible person.