One-man black metal inspired ambient music band Burzum has released its latest track, “Forgotten Realms,” a rough cut from an upcoming album. Using many of the same effects as last year’s The Ways of Yore, the new track shows a slow descent into a reality that more mysterious than dark.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUVQ2n2yvVU
Dreams have swept me away.
Into a long forgotten realm.
Down into the depths of the Earth.
Into a hidden cavern.Into the world below.
I walk into the forgotten past.
« Do not turn around ! »#
« Never look back ! »Fathers and mothers from ancient times.
Ghosts from a forgotten world.
With wonder they look upon me ;
« What took you so long ? »I wander not in darkness.
I am not lost, nor bewildered.
The path is not hidden.
The tracks are not old.I was here a moment ago.
I am home.
I am home.
I am home.
Varg pinches out another turd for us all to step on. Sounds like the shit I would make in the first couple of weeks of fooling around with sequencers, once I found the “phase” effect.
This takes the worst Burzum song from Filosofem, cuts the melody in half and adds stupid spacey shit on top.
I wish Euronymous got the better of Varg that day. Varg’s legacy would be intact, Euronymous would plead self-defence and would probably have released at least a couple more solid albums with Mayhem.
Euronymous was a student of the genre and could have remained relevant for much longer. Varg got by on inspiration alone and has been an embarrassment ever since it ran out.
Hvist was recorded after the murder but I would much rather have another Euro-Mayhem album than Hvist so no loss.
I agree, the music is embarrassing. Especially given all the obvious half-assed self-reference and the poor content.
This is trash. Varg can do better.
I mean what can you expect now. Dude is nerding out with home-made roleplaying games and neanderthals-are-white-people theories while being a dad. Shit, he is still a smart guy so its not like he is repellent but we should stop expecting brilliant music from him until he demonstrates otherwise.
Really disappointing. Ok, nice oscillation effect, where’s the melody? Structure? Harmonic movement? …Anything?
That “warning: do not fall asleep to this song!” warning made me lol though. All it needs is a spooky dancing skeleton
Why can’t good musicians/bands keep releasing quality material?
Look at your favorite metal bands. If they are still around, then they are putting out crap albums. No band gets better as time passes. Usually they have two good albums out, maybe even three, but the quality declines as the number of releases grow.
Why is that? Too much pressure on the band to keep writing in their “signature” style? Loss of inspiration? Loss of youth? Are even the most outsider-of-outsider bands still susceptible to the pressures of the industry?
This is not totally about Varg; look at the others who started their career with great albums and now are putting out pure shit: Immolation, Morbid Angel, Carcass, Metallica, Slayer, Suffocation, Emperor, Immortal, At the Gates, Death, Gorguts, just to name a few staples who’ve released classics and then apparently given up on their art altogether.
Bands like Slayer and others cursed themselves by trying to meet the expectations of their fans. They pay the bills with the music.
I respect Darkthrone and other bands for not following that road and keeping their shitty jobs, so they are not forced be “successful”.
Personally I would`n`t call most of the latest output of the bands you listed “crap”, but I know what you mean.
It`s all about opinion, but the last At The Gates album was pretty good.
More importantly, they started preaching to the choir and providing what the audience already likes, not advancing art/life with something of its own creation.
Would you guess that other bands who have further than Slayer suffered from riding the same rut? A sort of complacence with their established sound? Or do they act out of fear of alienating their fans? Or maybe something more complicated than those reasons?
I actually forgot about the new ATG album, which is not crap at least. I should have been careful about speaking so generally but I am talking about a pattern of behaviour in bands that is more than general; it’s practically universal. There’s no denying that of all the bands mentioned, there was a significant downward direction in quality as they progressed in their careers. It’s like something that metal bands have to do.
Pink Floyd and Rush and other rock acts kept putting out good albums. Lots of jazz players put together bands that just got better as they played longer. So we’re talking about a trend that’s mainly seen in metal as far as I know.
I think it’s because the artists don’t take the music all that seriously; they don’t look at it as art, they have those “rock star” dreams in which people in “the Metal scene” support. I read an interview with John McEntee and he said that after Diabolical Conquest/Infernal Storm, he knew he couldn’t make anything as good as the early stuff but he still struggled to keep Incantation going because he wanted something to do in life. I think Suffocation got back together for the same reasons, but then Mike Smith started crying about not making money from the band and he quit again.
But then again, we have to remember that those classic albums we love took years and years to work on and had a whole bunch of people working on them. Look at Incantation, you had Ledney and those other dudes working on the early stuff and then look how Mortal Throne of Nazarene turned out. I think that if bands approached all their albums like their early stuff (taking their time, making demos to show progress, etc.) the quality level would of been higher, but I guess there was pressure from labels making them work faster?
I’m thinking the same thing you’re thinking. Those are likely the reasons for bands going downhill pretty much exclusively after their first couple albums. But, the question is; what causes it and why can’t bands buck this trend and get better over time? I don’t know when that’s ever happened (among metal groups, anyway, other musicians don’t count).
You my dear Richard Head are very correct naming those staple bands that have sold out, but you know one death metal band that has never sold out? It is called Malevolent Creaaaatiooooooon ! *Oomphhh*
Yeah true, my favorite song by them is “let the bodies hit the floor”, it gets my blood boiling.
Malevolent Creation started playing Korn and Pantera riffs on In Cold Blood…
Their first 2 albums are alright, but it’s like Nocturnus: good, but I heard better death metal.
I think another issue is that as much as we want to think that the best works of these aforementioned artists were intentionally incredible pieces of art produced by individuals who know the ins and outs of music enough to abide by successful rules of composition while at the same time turning their backs on the crutches of conventional expression, chances are they were sonic accidents made by young kids who were just getting their feet wet and having fun. Unless you are a real, educated-for-years type of musician, chances are you are most inspired when you first pick up an instrument and realize the power you hold and the mystery behind notes you haven’t heard let alone created. I love all the best works by the aforementioned bands, but I would be surprised to hear that many of them contained real musicians in them. I wouldn’t even call myself a “real musician” let alone a “guitar player” so much as a guy that plays guitar, because I am not educated enough about music history or theory to be a full-fledged “musician.” I’m sure plenty of older metal players were influenced by classical players or the theories present in classical music, but that is different than “studying” their works, and claiming to have “studied” those works when chances are that meant you listened to them ad nauseum without fully comprehending what you are hearing does not make you a teacher of the game. As much as we don’t want to admit it, I’m not sure there are many actual “musicians” on the best metal records ever made, and I’m fine with that. However if there were, and the strengths of good composition were actually appreciated and understood, I would have a hard time believing that any of them would stand behind choices heard on The Black Album, Diabolus in Musica, and so on.
There is also the idea that maybe, money and recognition aside, many of these artists actually LIKE the stuff they are doing now. I stopped wondering why people don’t like what I like years ago. I don’t believe there are objective goods to art, per se, although I think the knowledge of music can provide a good framework to compose well thought out pieces, and I know that people are moved by different things. Metal is such a divisive genre because since we know it as music for outcasts, we place it as having some kind of inherent objective value over other forms of expression, and even dissect it further and further to give credence to our own beings are being superior than the herd even within the minority of presupposed subgenres. Some of us find what we like and stick to it for years because it legitimately moves us and some of us create prisons by what we are supposed to like due to fear of outside persecution or internal reflection toward the styles that we chose to define our best musically appreciative moments. The later works of the aforementioned artists are most likely the results of older guys being victims of the latter and putting out shit they unfortunately may have actually liked as kids.
Holy false dichotomy, Batman! It’s possible to know enough to express oneself, and to emulate the sounds that inspire you, without sitting down to a university course about it. Many of the classical greats had a similar approach within the context of their time (think of the Unfinished Symphony).
I understand that, but we DO hold metal musicians to probably the highest regard of current genre players, right? And we DO assume that they understand enough about musical composition to have utilized techniques to pen the greats, right? Therefore we DO assume that they should know better, which is why we are so let down when they become compositionally bankrupt. This is because of our assumptions getting the better of us as much as the shortcomings of the players themselves.
I don’t know about assume, but there’s evidence for this. There is also — as offered in the article — reasons why people become tired. Consider parallels to literature: many writers become sparser and more hasty as their careers go on, such as some of Jane Austen’s later novels. Usually this is a result of life becoming more complex and trying, such as the case of a lone musician trying to write albums, an RPG, and political propaganda while facing legal troubles within the state of his residence.
I would think those difficulties would be great fuel for writing inspired music.
More like fuel for personal exhaustion!
Struggles should inspire people. Expression shouldn’t come from a place of comfort, because when comfortable, what do you really have left to say?
Pretty lame Garageband-fuckery. On another note, I just heard some old Beherit and I might be wrong, but Varg did so too back in the day and thought “let`s do the same, just with less effort”.
Early Burzum shows influences from Therion, Bathory (!!!), Godflesh, Destruction, and others, but I think most of its influence may have come from the speed-metal era instrumentals. Compare “My Journey to the Stars” to “Orion.”
No doubt Beherit was influential… it remains one of the most influential black metal bands and one that has frequently steered the genre toward mental clarity.
I do not understand why you faggt nerds do not like this track.
It is fucking awesome! Like climbing down a dark stairway carved in solid rock into fathomless depths.
Fking ffgs ll of you.
As far as Varg goes, doesn’t he say that he doesn’t have anything to do with Metal anymore? Metal is anti-Herd and everything that Varg does now is for the Herd (Random White People). Where he’s at right now, he isn’t fit to make anything that has to do with Metal, so that’s why he’s making crappy music like this. I think Brett just talks about him still because his past contributions to Metal.
The view around here is that metal is neo-Romanticist, and part of Romanticism is culture, heritage and tradition. You could call that “herd thinking” but it’s a kind of herd thinking that’s necessary to being a functional person.
Another way to phrase this: the herd is going to have common ideas no matter what, and they will be either internet memes and old wives tales, ideology, or culture (w/ associated heritage and tradition).
I like recent Burzum. The last two tracks are unfinished and that is the feedback he needs.
Varg has moved from a dancing star to a pusher of ideology. He might have had elements of the latter ideology when he was making good music, but it wasn’t yet consuming him. His music now SOUNDS LIKE all his other media, in spirit. It’s pushing a certain aesthetic and ‘world-view’ down your throat. There is no mystery left in his music. Even if you are of his politics, it doesn’t mean you need such a literal rendering of it fed straight into your ears. This lacks subtlety and taste.
Good for falling asleep to.