Dauði Baldrs

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Dauði Baldrs
Studio album from Burzum

Publication
(s)

1997

Label (s) Misanthropy Records

Format (s)

CD, LP

Genre (s)

Ambient , Dark Ambient , Electronica , New Age

Title (number)

6th

running time

39:10

occupation

Studio (s)

Breiðablik Tónholl

chronology
Filosofem
(1996) 		Dauði Baldrs Hliðskjálf
(1998)

Dauði Baldrs ('The Death of Balders') is the fifth album by the Norwegian music project Burzum . After all of the previous recordings were assigned to Black Metal with a few electronic pieces, this is the project's first purely electronic album and its first concept album; it is dedicated to the Germanic myth about the death of the god Balder .

History of origin

During his time in prison, Varg Vikernes distanced himself from Black Metal, which he said he no longer felt connected to, called it " nigger music " and announced that he would probably never make metal records again. Even "after denying his metal past, Vikernes kept Burzum alive and used the recording devices that he was occasionally allowed to use during his time in prison." He played Dauði Baldrs exclusively with a keyboard , the album was released during his time in Bergen taken in prison. As a studio he specifies the Breiðablik Tónholl. He described the album as the first part of a trilogy about the Aesir.

After his release, Vikernes returned to metal despite statements to the contrary , taking up the Balder theme again and announcing that the metal version of the 1993 song Dauði Baldrs would be on the upcoming album Belus . Just like Dauði Baldrs , Belus is a concept album about Balder, the god of light; while the former only refers to the myth up to and including Ragnarök , Belus thematizes the entire myth. Compared to Dauði Baldrs it is an "infinitely more enlightened interpretation".

Track list

  1. Dauði Baldrs ('The Death of Balders') - 8:49
  2. Hermoðr á Helferð (' Hermóðr on his journey to Hel ') - 2:41
  3. Bálferð Baldrs ('Balders Cremation ') - 6:05
  4. Í heimr Heljar ('In Hels Heim') - 2:02
  5. Illa tiðandi ('Bad News') - 10:29
  6. Móti Ragnarokum ( ' Towards Ragnarök ') - 9:04

layout

The record cover , a painting by Tania Stene , shows several standing and a kneeling Viking as well as a Christian priest and his altar boy . Vikernes' racist view of the world is clearly evident in their portrayal : The coat of the kneeling Viking, who is the king of the others, is decorated with rounded swastikas , and Vikernes himself pointed out in the Muspellzheimr Journal that “everyone is blonde and blue-eyed, except to the stranger, the bringer of death, that is the priest and his acolyte ”.

An alternate cover, on which the title is given as Balder's dod , shows naked, dead Vikings on the floor; another crouches on the ground, a clothed Viking reaches out with a spiked club to kill him. Another laughs at him and another holds out a Latin cross to the naked Viking .

Music style and accompanying texts

All pieces are instrumental, but the album contains accompanying lyrics. Vikernes regards the myth of Balder's death as a metaphor for different sides of the human psyche; with Balder the meaning of life dies. Loki stands for the logic that recognizes a problem and tries to solve it without considering the consequences. Frigg stands for the purity of the heart and the mistletoe, through which Balder dies, is a parasite on the tree Yggdrasil , the tree of life and humanity. Hearing , which Loki uses to kill Balder with the mistletoe, symbolizes the blind in man. Balder's wife Nanna , who dies after his funeral with grief, stands for the closeness and of Thor came in anger to the stake and then dying dwarf Lit for the trust. So trust and closeness die when the meaning of life dies.

The sir then send Hermóðr (the mercurial force or the occult forces in humans) to Hel's realm of the dead, which Vikernes sees for the subconscious. Hermóðr meets Balder on the throne at Hel's side, with the goddess Hel in turn standing for human self-censorship. In order for Balder to go back to Ásgarðr , Hel demands that everyone and everything cry for him to prove that he is loved more than anything. Hermóðr reports back to the sir and they make everyone cry, except for an old woman who is actually Loki in disguise. Vikernes points out that logic, which Loki stands for, has no feelings. With this he prevents humanity from regaining the meaning of life; in other words, modern science prevents man from regaining the meaning of life. Man knows why he is alive, he knows the truth, but he cannot accept it because it cannot be scientifically proven. Therefore, Ragnarök is the only solution. Ragnarök is indeed the "twilight of the gods" (or "darkness" of the gods, cf. Old Norse røkkr ), but also a new beginning. After the fight, Balder and the sons and daughters of the gods would come back and bring the Golden Age .

When it comes to who plays the role of mistletoe, Vikernes at Heresy recommends taking a look at history and asking yourself that question. With the following rhetorical questions about who are the “parasites of humanity” and which religion has killed the pagan meaning of life, he alludes to the Jews and Christianity , respectively , thereby promoting the notion of a “Judaeo- Christianity ”takes over.

Although the record cover and Vikernes' explanations of the album's meaning are clearly racist, the accompanying texts “are not openly neo-Nazi . Rather, they reflect his pagan beliefs and are about characters from Norwegian folk tales and legends. "

The album is minimalistic, the songs mostly consist of just a few simple melodies that are repeated over the entire length. Chest from metal.de assumed in its review that it was a matter of endless repetitions that should actually only have been intros. Since these are MIDI recordings, the imitated instruments such as saxophone (as in Dauði Baldr's first song ) and violin do not sound authentic, whereas piano and keyboard sounds sound normal. According to Jшhnny from Ultimate-Guitar.Com, Bálferð Baldrs is a remake of Jesu død from the previous album Filosofem with a single melody that is repeated over the entire song; in some passages it is not played, in these you only hear the background choir and keyboards. Illa tiðandi is the minimalist piece; it consists of only simple, slow piano melodies, two of which are continuously repeated and occasionally supplemented by a choir. Vikernes himself wrote on his website in 2009:

"Dauði Baldrs" was what I could do from a prison cell, and "Hliðskjálf" too, but they were all music that I liked.

"'Dauði Baldrs' was what I could do in a prison cell and ' Hliðskjálf ' too, but they were all the music I liked."

- Varg Vikernes : A Burzum Story: Part X - The White God

On the album Dauði Baldrs “Vikernes [...] relied on spherical synthesizer sounds instead of rocking melodies”; the album is usually assigned to the ambient , or dark ambient , in the book Lords of Chaos it is described as a "kind of dark electronica " and "in combination with the mystical metaphor of the lyrics [...] even as dark new age music " designated.

reception

The music on Dauði Baldrs and Hliðskjálf has been compared to the band Dead Can Dance or referred to as a copy of it; Vikernes himself mentioned in interviews that he got to know and often heard their album Within the Realm of a Dying Sun 1992.

Truhe from metal.de judged that with Dauði Baldrs “ Burzum was delivering something really useful again: powerful music, varied songs, innovative melodies. At least theoretically. ”As extended intros, these pieces would result in“ [l] boring, hardly changing keyboard tune, which is not even suitable for falling asleep due to the nerve factor increasing exponentially after a minute. ”Tyler Munro from sputnikmusic judged,“ pretty much everything about this album “Was terrible. It is the “black metal” equivalent of the scene from Freddy Got Fingered , in which Gordon plays an organ made of sausages, a “lame attempt” in a neoclassical setting, and sounds like being played on a children's piano. The record cover is ridiculous, and he hasn't laughed as he did with this music in a long time, although the album begins epic until the saxophone MIDI track kicks in. Jшhnny from Ultimate-Guitar.Com described Dauði Baldrs as a "great ambient album" with terrible MIDI sounds that made the album much worse; He criticized that instruments such as the saxophone and violin sound ridiculous as MIDI versions, the sound of the lead violin destroys the song Hermoðr á Helferð, for example .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Jшhnny: Dauði Baldrs Review. December 23, 2009, accessed June 22, 2010 .
  2. ↑ a b c d Michael Moynihan , Didrik Søderlind: Lords of Chaos . Satanic Metal: The Bloody Rise from the Underground. Extended and revised edition 2005. 6th edition. ProMedia GmbH, Zeltingen-Rachtig 2005, ISBN 3-936878-00-5 , p. 196 .
  3. ^ Interview from Genocide zine. In: Genocide Zine. 1997, accessed June 28, 2010 .
  4. ↑ Josh: Interview with Josh of Abruptum zine (Feb. 1998). (No longer available online.) In: Abruptum Zine. 1998, archived from the original on August 10, 2009 ; accessed on January 8, 2010 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.burzum.com
  5. ↑ Tolis Yiovanitis: Interview from Greek Metal Hammer (Autumn 1997). (No longer available online.) In: Metal Hammer . 1997, archived from the original on January 12, 2010 ; accessed on June 28, 2010 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.burzum.com
  6. ↑ a b c d e f Interview from Heresy zine # 3. (No longer available online.) Heresy Magazine # 3, archived from the original on December 28, 2009 ; accessed on June 22, 2010 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.burzum.com
  7. ↑ a b Varg Vikernes: A Burzum Story: Part X - The White God. November 14, 2009, accessed June 22, 2010 .
  8. ↑ Interview with Varg Vikernes (February 2010). 2010, accessed on June 22, 2010 .
  9. ^ A b c Christian Dornbusch , Hans-Peter Killguss: Unheilige Alliances . Black Metal between Satanism, Paganism and Neo-Nazism. Unrast Verlag , Münster 2005, ISBN 3-89771-817-0 , p. 39 .
  10. ↑ a b chest: Burzum - Dauði Baldrs - CD review at metal.de. metal.de, October 20, 1997, accessed June 22, 2010 .
  11. ↑ Beherit - Unholy Black Metal. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on June 5, 2010 ; accessed on July 1, 2010 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.anus.com
  12. ^ Burzum - Ambient Black Metal. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on June 4, 2010 ; accessed on July 1, 2010 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.anus.com
  13. ^ The music of Burzum. Retrieved July 1, 2010 .
  14. ↑ Duje: Burzum - Hliðskjálf review. Metal Storm, April 26, 1999, accessed July 1, 2010 .
  15. ↑ Varg Vikernes: A Burzum Story: Part I - The Origin And Meaning. December 2004, accessed July 1, 2010 .
  16. Jump up ↑ Brad Angle: Burzum: Heart of Darkness. In: Guitar World. April 2010, accessed July 1, 2010 .
  17. ^ Tyler Munro: Burzum - Dauði Baldrs Review. sputnikmusic, January 8, 2007, accessed June 22, 2010 .