Burzum (Album)

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Burzum
Burzum studio album

publication
(s)

1992

label(s) Deathlike Silence Productions

Format(s)

CD, LP

genre(s)

black metal

title (number)

9

length

47 min 4 s

occupation

production

Eirik "Pytten" Hundvin and Count Grishnackh, Euronymous (co-production)

Studio(s)

Grieghallen Lyd Studio

chronology
— Burzum Aske
(EP, 1993)

Burzum is the debut album by Varg Vikernes ' solo project of the same name . The black metal album was released in 1992 on Øystein Aarseth 's Deathlike Silence Productions (DSP) label and reissued by Misanthropy Records in 1995 along with the Aske EP . It is considered one of the milestones of the second black metal wave from Norway.

origin story

Varg Vikernes met Øystein Aarseth, known as Euronymous, in his former record store Helvete (Norwegian 'hell') in Oslo in the early 1990s . Vikernes, who actually comes from Bergen , often visited the scene. A friendship developed between him, Aarseth and the rest of the members of the band Mayhem . Mayhem drummer Jan Axel Blomberg (Hellhammer) commented:

" I liked it the first time I saw it at Helvete. He wasn't an ass kisser like the others, he had a mind of his own. Euronymous was also very fond of him and at first the two almost adored each other. "

– Jan Axel Blomberg

In the years that followed, Vikernes developed into a key figure in the so-called " Inner Circle " of the Norwegian black metal scene. Aarseth had founded the Deathlike Silence Productions label at the time and also signed Vikernes' solo project Burzum , which had by then released two demos of instrumental tracks. The name Burzum comes from the Black Speech invented by JRR Tolkien for The Lord of the Rings : Burzum means 'darkness' ( Bûrz 'dark', -um [nominalization suffix]): "The 'darkness' of the Christians was of course my 'light '. So all in all it was natural for me to use the name Burzum."

Due to Aarseth's financial distress, the recordings were repeatedly delayed. Vikernes' mother Lene Bore took over a large part of the financing. These took place in January 1992 at the Grieghallen Lydstudio owned by Eirik "Pytten" Hundvin. The studio was chosen because it was close to where Vikernes lived and because he knew Hundvin from his former band Old Funeral days. Hundvin produced the album himself with the help of Vikernes; Aarseth appeared as co-producer.

Kolgrim, an ex-member of Vikernes' old band, lent his drums . The instruments on the album were recorded entirely by Vikernes. Aarseth only recorded War 's guitar solo and the background noise produced by a gong . Inferior equipment, such as a defective Marshall amplifier , was used to create a sound that was as raw and unpolished as possible. The vocals were sung through headphones. According to Vikernes, the album was recorded and mastered in just 19 hours . All tracks on the album were recorded in the first take.

A promotional tape featuring the tracks Feeble Screams from Forests Unknown and Ea, Lord of the Depths was released in February for promotional purposes, and the album followed in March 1992.

After release

At the latest after the release of the debut album, the "Inner Circle" developed around the two protagonists Aarseth and Vikernes into a criminal organization, which is responsible for several church arson attacks and attacks on various members of hostile music groups. For example, Therion singer Christofer Johnsson's house was set on fire. The crime is believed to have been committed by an 18-year-old girl named Suuvi Mariotta Puurunen, who worshiped "the Count," as she affectionately called Vikernes in reference to his pseudonym Count Grishnackh at the time , and regarded her as her "leader." Before setting the fire, she scratched the words "The Count was here and will come back" on the door with a knife. There she also stapled a signed record cover of the Burzum album. Since one of the residents noticed the fire in time, worse things could be prevented. Vikernes himself became radicalized, boasting publicly in the Bergen daily newspaper Bergens Tidende about the crimes he and the Inner Circle had committed. He hoped this would promote the second album. In January 1993 he was arrested for the first time. He was charged with several attempted and committed arson attacks. He was released in March 1993 for lack of evidence.

Fantoft Stave Church after reconstruction

In March 1993, the recorded in August 1992 Aske -EP (Norwegian 'ash') was released, on which a new recording of A Lost Forgotten Sad Spirit can be found. On the cover of the EP is a photograph of the ruins of Fantoft Stave Church , which burned to the ground in an arson attack on June 6, 1992. A lighter was included with the EP that featured this cover.

During the imprisonment, the situation between Aarseth and Vikernes came to a head; Vikernes claimed that Aarseth withheld his royalties from the first album and EP and failed to pay his mother's debt. On the morning of August 10, 1993, Aarseth was murdered by Vikernes. He was subsequently sentenced to 21 years in prison – the maximum sentence in Norway. He was charged not only with the murder of Aarseth, but also with setting fire to three churches, attempting to set fire to another church and possessing weapons and explosives. Vikernes was never convicted of the arson at Fantoft Stave Church, the ruins of which were featured on the Aske EP.

reissue

In its original version, the debut album was not officially re-released. Instead, after the end of Deathlike Silence Productions in 1995 , Burzum/Aske was released by Misanthropy Records in digipak and LP versions. Burzum/Aske was the third release from the label established specifically for the Burzum albums. The first two releases were the re-release of Burzum's second album Det som engang var , released in August 1993, and its successor Hvis lyset tar oss (1994). In 1998, a box entitled 1992-1997 , limited to 1000 copies, was released , containing all releases between 1992 and 1997 as picture LPs .

Compared to the debut album, all references to Aarseth have been removed, as has the old version of A Lost Forgotten Sad Spirit and all photos. Instead, it contains the songs from the Aske EP and a German translation in addition to the English and Norwegian lyrics. The debut cover has been reused in a slightly lightened version, the EP cover has been printed on a small sticker and can also be seen on the CD label.

There were several mistakes in the track listing and (for the LP version) the lyrics on the original version, which have been corrected on the reissue. Ea, Lord of the Deeps is actually Ea, Lord of the Depths . In Black Spell of Destruction , the "Black" was omitted.

Artwork

The cover was created by Jannicke Wiese-Hansen. The artwork is based on an AD&D series role-playing book called The Temple of Elemental Evil and shows a vaguely recognizable robed person standing in a gray landscape. Varg Vikernes made sure that a photo of him was used inside, in which he is hardly or not at all recognizable. In order to disguise his identity, he also adopted the pseudonym Count Grishnackh in reference to the orc Grishnákh from the book The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. The lyrics are printed on the LP version.

title list

A-Side ( Side Hate )

  1. Feeble Screams from Forests Unknown – 7:28
  2. Ea, Lord of the Deeps —4:52
  3. Black Spell of Destruction —5:39
  4. Channeling the Power of Souls into a New God —3:27

B-side ( Side Winter )

  2. Was – 2:30
  3. The Crying Orc – 0:57
  4. A Lost Forgotten Sad Spirit —9:10
  5. My Journey to the Stars —8:10
  6. Dungeons of Darkness —4:51

Music genre

In contrast to Vikernes' later albums, this one is heavily influenced by the so-called first wave of black metal from the 1980s. In particular , Hellhammer and Bathory are to be mentioned as influencing factors. The songs are almost entirely monotonous and mostly do without rhythm changes and demanding guitar solos . The production of the album is deliberately primitive and gives it an additional rawer sound. It was deliberately kept that way to set it apart from the slick and technically perfect productions in death metal of the time and create its own distinctive sound.

The album begins with a short synthesizer intro . Some songs, like Feeble Screams from Forests Unknown and Ea, Lord of the Depths , are very fast and double bass throughout . Above all lies Varg Vikernes ' Black Metal typical screaming . Spell of Destruction is quite slow. Channeling the Power of Souls into a New God is an (almost) purely instrumental piece that was created entirely on the synthesizer and is reminiscent of ambient sounds . They are early experiments in the musical style Vikernes appropriated on his two albums Dauði Baldrs (1997) and Hliðskjálf (1999). At the end of the piece, the request "Worship me! "

War is an uncharacteristic piece for Burzum. With its 2 minutes 30 seconds it is quite short and incorporates influences from heavy metal and thrash metal . The relatively simple riffing is reminiscent of punk music and makes the song catchy. Vikernes cites Bathory as an influence on the song. The Crying Orc is the second instrumental track on the album, this time for guitar. It's calm and melodic. A Lost Forgotten Sad Spirit is the longest track on the album at 9 minutes. Recorded at a slow tempo, it features few tempo changes and is largely based on the same riff. My Journey to the Stars , on the other hand, consists of several tempo changes. Dungeons of Darkness , another instrumental track, is again very monotonous. Vikernes co-wrote this song with Aarseth. It ends the initial release of the album.

lyrics

The texts mainly deal with dark fantasy stories, inspired mainly by the role-playing game AD&D and the fantasy work The Lord of the Rings . Later, Vikernes, who now appears as a right- wing extremist and neo -paganist, tried to reinterpret the texts on Norse mythology . Contrary to his earlier image, he denied satanic tendencies in an interview in the English extreme metal magazine Terrorizer and on various fan pages on the Internet.

Although the lyrics are in verse, only the play War contains rhymes . Some lines of text often contain only single words in the form of a chain of associations , which together form the basic part of the story. As an example, here are the opening verses of Feeble Screams from Forests Unknown in the German translation:

"Floating / In the air / Over a cold lake / Is a soul / From an earlier / Better time / Reaching for a / Mystical thought / In vain ... but who knows."

Recurring themes throughout the album are the search for an earlier, better time, as well as magic and darkness. The texts are kept emotionless and only serve to describe the content. They also contain misanthropic, apocalyptic visions ("The tragedy of the world / will be served on my feast day" - Spell of Destruction , "Darkness, hatred and winter / will rule the earth when I return" - My Journey to the Stars ). A deep feeling of hopelessness runs through the entire album ("The Hopeless Soul / Keeps Waiting" - Feeble Screams from Forests Unknown ), which is repeatedly interrupted by bellicose statements ("And yet we must never give up" - War , "Hear my sword " —Spell of Destruction ).

Feeble Screams from Forests Unknown is described by Vikernes today as the quintessence of his work at the time. All other songs are just "footnotes". In terms of content, the song describes the journey of an ancient soul who tries to open a gate and fails. The song ends with the line "The hopeless soul keeps mating ." When transferring this line to the text part of the first publication, Aarseth changed the term "mating" to "waiting" (progressive form of English wait 'to wait'). This phenomenon can also be observed on the Misanthropy Productions edition.

Ea, Lord of the Depths is about the Sumerian deity Ea who is considered the "Lord of the Earth" and takes the form of a sea monster. In a later interview, Vikernes claimed that this was the Mesopotamian Aquarius and related it to Odin , who in turn was the "Norse Aquarius". Fenriz of Darkthrone used the track for his 2004 black metal compilation Fenriz Presents... The Best of Old-School Black Metal .

Black Spell of Destruction is about a "curse of destruction" that glorifies the annihilation of the world. The curse is literally "Ftraga Sheb Nigurepur" and is written in a fantasy language that is apparently based on HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos and is reminiscent of the incantations of the Necronomicon .

War is a fantasy text describing the last thoughts of a dying warrior. Vikernes later attempted to reinterpret the song's theme as an 'Odinist[s] concept of death in battle'. In view of previous interviews in which he exclusively referred to JRR Tolkien , this attempt at an explanation is dubious.

A Lost Forgotten Sad Spirit is an epic piece about a dead boy in a tomb. Waiting to be freed from the tomb, doomed to haunt forever as a "lost, forgotten, sad ghost."

My Journey to the Stars is based on a dream by Vikernes and describes an astral journey . Due to the right-wing extremist attitude that Vikernes openly showed, the line of text "War between races / A goal is reached" (English 'War between races / A goal is reached') can be interpreted as a reference to the same. In the context of the album, however, she was ignored. Here, too, irregularities were created by Aarseth: the first line "I immaterialize" ('I dissolve') was erroneously stated as "I materialize" ('I materialize'), which reverses the meaning of the beginning. This error was also not improved in the new edition.

meaning and reception

While the Norwegian Inner Circle scene, which dates back to Aarseth, was criticized in particular by the mainstream press, such as Rock Hard and Metal Hammer , the bands achieved cult status in some fanzines, mainly due to the media attention given to the Norwegian black metal scene after the church arson. The first edition of the album (with a contact address for Burzum and that of DSP, the second edition lists the addresses of DSP and Voices of Wonder), the vinyl version and especially the Aske EP are sought-after rarities. Before the actual hype surrounding black metal, bands emerged whose style was compared to that of Burzum or who named Burzum as an inspiration, such as Dawnfall and Martyrium from Germany, Fleurety and Forgotten Woods from Norway and Black Funeral from the USA. When the public became aware of the one-man project shortly thereafter, Vikernes' primitive gameplay, which contained numerous game errors, and the poor production were first highlighted.

The musical project Burzum was worshiped almost like a cult by some black metal representatives who did not position themselves on the side of Aarseth after the murder; even representatives of the black metal scene, who today are generally regarded as "traitors" to this style, such as the British Cradle of Filth , wore Burzum T-shirts with the Aske motif in the early 1990s. Today the album is considered a classic of the genre, which embodied all the characteristics of the second wave quite early on. Eirik Hundvin's raw production also played a big part; this rose in the 1990s with his Grieghallen Studio to become the best-known producer of Norwegian black metal. The depressive mood and the creation of a unique atmosphere are highlighted by today's critics. Innovations such as the use of ambient and noise -like pieces and primitiveness as a stylistic principle are mentioned again and again. The (musical) influence of the project is also underlined, whereby the ideology and personality of Varg Vikernes are usually explicitly distanced.

The style of the album should also shape various black metal bands, which also created depressive atmospheres. The synth passages were rare at the time, but were soon copied by other black metal bands as well. Because of the primitive song structures, the songs of the debut and the EP were often covered by other bands . Several tribute albums that were released officially or semi-officially still show the influence of this album today. In particular, so-called NSBM bands adopted the style or covered pieces of the debut. In German-speaking countries, there is also Nargaroth , René Wagner's solo project, which was stylistically based on Burzum, among other things, covered Black Spell of Destruction and published a song entitled The Day Burzum Killed Mayhem ; However, Wagner claims that he is not a Burzum fan.

itemizations

  1. ↑ Ablaze No. 6, September/October 1995, p. 12.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Varg Vikernes: A Burzum Story: Part I - The Origin And Meaning .
  3. ↑ a b Moynihan, Michael /Søderlind, Didrik: Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise from the Underground . Promedia, Zeltingen 2002, ISBN 3-936878-00-5 , pp. 141ff.
  4. ↑ Varg Vikernes: Until the Light Takes Us (film documentary) . 2008
  5. ↑ a b Varg Vikernes: A Burzum Story Part VI – The Music
  6. ↑ The promotional tape at Burzum.org
  7. ↑ Moynihan, Michael/Søderlind, Didrik: Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise from the Underground . Promedia, Zeltingen 2002, p. 112
  8. ↑ Moynihan, Michael/Søderlind, Didrik: Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise from the Underground . Promedia, Zeltingen 2002, p. 144 ff.
  9. ↑ cultmetal.com: Burzum - Aske ( memento from January 2, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
  10. ↑ Entry on Discogs.com
  11. ↑ Box on Cultmetal.com ( Memento of October 20, 2013 at the Internet Archive )
  12. ↑ Interview in the Abruptum fanzine, 1998 ( Memento of August 10, 2009 at the Internet Archive )
  13. ↑ a b Interview in the Hammer of Damnation fanzine , ca. 1992 .
  14. ↑ Interview in Terrorizer Magazine #26, 1996
  15. ↑ a b c Moynihan, Michael/Søderlind, Didrik: Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise from the Underground . Promedia, Zeltingen 2002, p. 180
  16. ↑ various interviews on Burzum.com
  17. ↑ a b Translated from the digipak booklet, Misanthropy Productions 1995.
  18. ↑ Legacy 05/2006, p. 138.
  19. ↑ Crash from the base . In: Rock Hard , No. 67, December 1992, p. 32.
  20. ↑ Brain Dead! . In: Rock Hard , No. 68, January 1993, p. 9.
  21. ↑ Frank Albrecht: Bullshit to the power of three! In: Rock Hard , No. 71, April 1993, p. 97.
  22. ↑ Roccor, Bettina: Heavy Metal - The Bands. The fans. The opponents . Munich: Beck, 1998, p. 64 ff. ISBN 3-406-42073-7 .
  23. ↑ Farin, Klaus / Weidenkaff, Ingo: Youth cultures in Thuringia , Berlin, 1999, p. 61 ff. ISBN 3-933773-25-3 .
  24. ↑ a b Frank: CD-Review: Burzum - Burzum/Aske ( Memento from February 6, 2005 in the Internet Archive ).
  25. ↑ Dawnfall . In: Infernus , No. 2.
  26. ↑ Martyrdom . True black metal . In: Tales of the Macabre , #1.
  27. ↑ Fleurety . Black Snow . In: Tales of the Macabre , #1.
  28. ↑ Iormungand Thrazar: Forgotten Woods › As the wolves gather .
  29. ↑ BLACK FUNERAL .
  30. ↑ Ablaze No. 6, September/October 1995, p. 56.
  31. ↑ Burzum - Ambient Black Metal ( Memento of 10 July 2009 at the Internet Archive ).
  32. ↑ Toto Vellani: Burzum - Burzum/Aske ( Memento of December 21, 2007 in the Internet Archive ).
  33. ↑ Steve Huey: Biography at Allmusic .
  34. ↑ ~Vargscarr~, Roberto: Interview with NARGAROTH ( Memento of January 28, 2010 at the Internet Archive ). In: Maelstrom , No. 7, 2002.