New Burzum track shows metal technique applied to folk

varg_vikernes-burzum-band_photoThe semi-reclusive Varg Vikernes, sole composer of Burzum, has announced his plans to release a film and a new role-playing game (RPG). As part of the film project, he has revealed a new track designed to act as part of a soundtrack for the film.

As if influenced by some of the non-black-metal soundtrack material from the film Until the Light Takes Us in which Vikernes, as in Lords of Chaos, the most in-depth story of black metal before it, Vikernes opts for a down-tempo single guitar track with no distortion.

The result utilizes a slow and gentle sweeping arpeggio behind which lower notes direct the evolution of the track, much as happened with the countertheme in “Rundgang um die transzendentale Säule Der Singularität” from Filosofem. As the song goes on, these layers interact to push change into the main theme, not in the electronica method of circular layers, but the metal one of a narrative expanding from within itself.

It is hard to tell if this is the type of material that will be on the forthcoming Burzum album Sôl austan, Mâni vestan. While many consider the “keyboard albums” among the band’s best output, a mixed-medium album could be interesting. While this new track has one foot in that world, it also has one foot in the more audience-geared world of the last few Burzum black metal albums.

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The relationship between black metal, ambient and neoclassical music

nordic_dark_ambient_neoclassical_black_metalIn the mainstream press, black metal has a reputation for being solely misanthropic, heavily distorted anthems of aggression and despair that are defined by their primitive minimalism.

While this may hold true for the majority of contemporary bands, this view overlooks the foundational bands of the genre, who possessed a deft sense of melody and the focus to create longer compositions that allowed for more introspection.

Just as black metal musicians created a more minimalistic form of death metal, some were able to apply the same approach to the ambient and neoclassical genres, crafting tracks that through the use of repetition, stirring melodies, and tonal variation reveal the genre’s primal elegance without need of layers of distortion.

Given the news that Neptune Towers is being released on vinyl and Burzum is releasing an album comprised entirely of electronic music, now seems a fitting time to investigate this interesting subgenre and how it arose from black metal in several instances.

Burzum

Favoring simple but expansive compositions, contemplative melodies soar over mild arpeggios; in addition to a few tracks of industrial nihilistic deconstruction. Through the utilization of modern technology, Burzum makes narrative and meditative music that like its inspiration Tolkien, takes the participant on an internal journey to another realm.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BajdtSD0eWk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30lt14WQ1w0

Neptune Towers

A side project of Darkthrone‘s Fenriz, in Neptune Towers haunting melodies glide over dark drones while otherworldly noises color the backdrop. Evocative tracks signal the coming to Earth of a yet-unknown alien species or perhaps the future evolution of humanity, the soundtrack to the future.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLcMbXNbkik

Beherit

This band fuses its earlier black metal style with the industrial, pop, and ambient genres, featuring melodies that would not be out of place on a metal album, but pairs them with repetitive trance-like drums, synths, and found sounds that coalesce into epic moments before fading away like the rays of a burned out sun. Fans of multiple genres should appreciate this one.


Ildjarn

Elegant and skillfully composed tracks celebrating the beauty of nature in their simplicity reveal a greater depth of expression than would be possible with over-produced tracks. Just as he did with black metal, Ildjarn with compatriot Nidhogg reduces neoclassical music to its most basic form and builds from it an enchanting structure.


Lord Wind

A side project of Graveland, with Lord Wind martial drumming and heroic melodies bring to mind the battles of old, while synths and choruses expand the project’s horizons, providing reach to contrast with the grounded and earthy rhythms. Well-crafted neoclassic folk music, this is the further continuation of Graveland‘s second stage.


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Burzum – Umskiptar

The good news is that it’s more clearly Vikernes writing this record. His previous voice, like his previous actions, seemed to get swallowed up by the notions of his “advisors.” As a result, previous albums did not sound at all like something he touched at all with his personality. This album re-engages his soul a bit more but remains a deliberate use of his talent to produce something cut to form, and the form is what is dictated by the audience. The result is to repeat the error of modern society over again: the people are led by economics or politics, instead of the other way around. While song structures vary somewhat, Umskiptar is designed around the verse-chorus model with melodic choruses and rhythmic, upbeat verses. Like many pasted-together projects, these are united with chromatic fills or conventional devices borrowed out of classic metal. While this album is not as cynically manipulative as the new Napalm Death, for example, it falls short of what made Burzum great, which was an innovative thinker opening up his mind and creativity to the audience. Like his mentor Tolkien, he took people on an adventure with what was and might be again. With Umpskiptar, the listener feels as if he is in one of those Disney-ride type “folk metal” bands that is mostly rock music with folk touches. Bands have been doing this since the 1970s… it has never succeeded, because people regress to the mean and in this case, it’s the archetype of rock and not folk. Vikernes’ early influences come out here, with muffled-chord riffs that sound straight off the first Destruction LP and what sounds like Iron Maiden influences. Musically, it’s adept enough that no part is offensive, and his use of three-part riff clusters as in traditional music is much appreciated, but it doesn’t add up. The whole is not greater than the parts and no atmosphere is created, thus the whole time we are aware that we are modern consumers listening to a modern musical product. Further, the riffs, tempi, themes and transitions are very similar, which in the absence of prior atmosphere does not cause a deepening but a sensation of floating on the surface. Many of the vocal tracks are entirely chanted in the death metal voice, which creates a ludicrous sensation of being yelled at by a drunk guy on the subway. By the time we get to “Valgaldr,” which sounds like an outtake from a bad stoner doom metal album, the lack of energy going into this album is evident. It’s ridiculous to expect an older musician to recapture his younger days. However, it’s equally ridiculous to sabotage a good musical brand by turning it from something rare and brilliant into something pedestrian with interesting “touches” and “accents.” That cuts to the real problem with this album and all post-jail Burzum: they’re boring. Not unmusical, but sparse in density with songs obviously patched-together “to be a song” and not to have any voice of its own. The new crop of teenagers he wants to sell albums to may enjoy this but it’s not distinctly better than its competition enough that it will endure as anything other than an SKU#.

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Burzum – Belus

ANUS came out a couple weeks ago with a giant defecation on the new Burzum. People immediately complained that we hadn’t heard it, were being judgmental, and all sorts of silly stuff. What they didn’t realize is that you can hear a lot of things without officially owning them or getting them from the label, but you’re not going to do anything to hurt your sources. All of that changed last night, of course, with the official leak of the Belus master and 2LP version.

You want the tl;dr on the new Burzum? “Sounds good, soulless and disorganized.” This album has no direction but Varg is so adept at making simple riffs pretty that you want to drink it down. Cold, sweet, vast in flavor like a Snapple — but after listening to it a few times, you end up thinking: why am I doing this? This is no different than watching TV, going to a megachurch to hear about my immortal soul, or buying wallpaper. It’s pretty but has no direction so it ends up being like all other drone albums: a basic theme that picks up detail as repetition increases, then trails off into nowhere.

If you want music to replicate the experience of watching cheerleaders attempt to act out Macbeth, this might be for you, but not likely. Riffs are based on simple harmony and well-composed, but go nowhere, incorporating at random influences from Russian black metal, Ukranian black metal, German speed metal, Terrorizer and random death metal. A good deal of this shows the tripartite influence of Swedish melodic death metal, Slavic drone metal, and the American style of black metal flavored indie rock. The first track “borrows” the melody from the title track of one of the keyboard albums. Two of these tracks are obvious Uruk Hai do-overs.

The final track sounds like Sunn o))) doing their version of Burzum. Makes me wonder if the label and his Russian handlers didn’t sit him down with recent black metal blockbusters and try to get the trained monkey to make his own version. The musical ability here is precocious as always, but the raw material fed into the machine is gunk, so what’s output is really well-adorned gunk.

When you hear it, notice how simple the riffs are relative to the fills, trills and decorations that space them. It’s like dressing up a turd until it looks like a Faberge egg, from a distance. But when you get close, or listen to it a dozen times, you’ll see the difference.

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Until the Light Takes Us: Review

This long-awaited independent film documentary finally hit London as part of the Raindance film festival, as metalheads and indie pricks alike filled the seats to watch what has been promoted as the least sensationalist take on the all too familiar events surrounding the Inner Circle and that Scandinavian wave of Black Metal. ‘Until the Light Takes Us’ presents the story through the thoughts of some important figures from that scene, most notably Burzum’s Varg Vikernes and Fenriz of Darkthrone, who are able to articulate more of what constituted the worldview of that movement, from two very different perspectives – Varg as the idealist finding himself trapped within his surroundings and Fenriz as a former idealist now trapped within himself. For example, the Count Grishnackh likens his experience in prison to being in a monastery, as it imposes a strong sense of discipline on him, conducive to self-development, engaging with reality at the level of ‘ideas’ and the eternal quest for ‘Truth’. Fenriz, on the other hand, looks pretty directionless and resentful of the events that culminated in his loss of spirit to the extent that he describes his current music with Darkthrone as like petting dogs (the fans) and inspiring them to share his misery, possibly offing themselves as a result.

This film is clearly a chance for those involved to speak about such things after the initial media attention and exposure had long ago infected the exclusivist purity of Norwegian Black Metal. As such, it is not really a film about Black Metal. No clear picture is put together as to be able to explain what Black Metal is, although larger conclusions can be drawn as streams of dialogue intersect and are placed alongside appropriate imagery and Nordic scenery. The anti-Judeo-Christian sentiments of church burnings and the anti-consumerist, anti-westernisation implications of Helvete’s radical ideology are explored with reasonable depth, but there is nothing much said about what they affirmed and found beauty in, which is the real impulse behind many classic Black Metal albums. Combined with what seemed to be the ultimate fate of these artists as some form of social ostracisation and self-destruction (captured by Satyricon’s Frost and his throat-slitting public art display, and Dead’s suicide), Black Metal – whatever it is – comes off as a dark curiosity ultimately yielding fatalistic results. Fair enough, that’s not the purpose of the movie, but for a Black Metal initiate, this film offers little more than surplus interview material. It’s interesting as a documentary, exploring the detrimental effects of media bullshit super-imposed on an ideological and artistic movement that stood well outside of what the media can express in it’s limited lexicon, and provides content for those interested to further research this cryptic genre.

– Written by ObscuraHessian

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Varg Gets out of the Can – Our Views and Thoughts

The release of Burzum’s mastermind Varg Vikernes from jail after fulfilling his sentence for the killing of his former friend and band partner Øystein Aarseth has raised a literal thunderstorm on the ethereal world of the net. The aforementioned phenomenon is not unusual if one knows the Internet and the people who frequent it, and was therefore easily predicted.

After all, the profile of someone like Varg – a convicted murderer (killing another human being is always bad, kids, remember that) with extreme political and racial views that don’t make him the most likeable person, at least for most people, and who gave many bogus declarations in the past (the ratio of truth vs. bullshit being relative depending on whether you’re talking with an admirer or a detractor) – is not the most favorable for a person with the truest intention to be left alone, but makes for great talking on message boards.

The thing about all the talking and bloviating is that, save for a small few who either don’t care or outright hate Varg’s music, most detractors will readily admit that the works under the Burzum moniker are worthy of consideration, and even of admiration. It’s like people still have a problem separating the person from his works.

But I’ll leave that well alone. The man’s release still needs to be commented because of the newest declarations made by Vikernes. Apparently, he will not completely shut himself from the world and will try to rekindle his music and writing careers.

After the years of continuous reunions from older, legendary bands being most of them complete flops and dissapointments, yours truly had virtually lost all faith in this phenomenon, until certain albums by certain bands like Celtic Frost and Beherit showed that reunions weren’t just mere vehicles to regain a fame and name that should have been better kept under wraps. The aforementioned acts actually showed a concern for metal’s artistic decadence and came back to prove how it’s really done (the tag of most reunions out there, but this time they really accomplished that).

Like Beherit’s, Burzum’s musical comeback should be taken with initial skepticism – after all, reunions and the like haven’t lost their essentially gimmicky nature -, but I really hope, having faith on the man’s talent and how it has maintained itself through the years, that he will be able to make an artistically honest effort that would contribute bringing metal back to life like Engram was.

In any case, one should also expect much on his future writing career, a topic that isn’t much talked about since Varg isn’t really famous for being a writer, having his music and all of the norwegian soap opera taken the forefront. It’s unfair, really, given that, despite the fact that Vikernes wasn’t a born writer, like his clumsy early essays prove, he has, throughout the years, developed an engaging style and it will be worthwhile to see what it results from that. That said, a book elaborating on scandinavian and related mythos, expanding on the short stories of Filosofem, for example, could be quite something. But, like life roughly teaches us, we should not get ahead of things and instead wait patiently.

A new Burzum album and one or two books worth considering is what’s on the future for Mr. Vikernes and the ones who might care. Oh, and there’s also a movie, but we won’t get into that…

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