Burzum

 

The story of BURZUM is well-documented, so I'm not sure how much detail to go into.  I'll try to limit my discussion to the music and not focus on non-music shenanigans. Varg Vikernes (the mastermind behind Burzum) began a solo project called Kalashnikov around 1988, after he had only been playing the guitar for a couple years. Within a year or so, he changed the name to Uruk-Hai. There is debate about whether or not there are any known recordings from that time period.  In later years (sometime in the later 1990s), some recordings emerged of Uruk-Hai material, but there is doubt about whether it's from 1988-89 or the early 90s.

After the early Uruk-Hai years, Vikernes joined the Norwegian death/black metal band Old Funeral.  As I noted on my entry for early Norwegian black metal, this band also had (at various times) Abbath (of Immortal fame) and Jørn (of Hades fame). Varg has said his time in Old Funeral was highly educational, as he learned about the more technical aspects of music. 

A classic promotional pic of Varg

After the demise of this band, Vikernes revived the project Uruk-Hai before soon changing its name to Burzum, which is the word for "darkness" in the Black Speech of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.  He also started going by the stage name Count Grishnackh to further distance himself from his old ways. Burzum was more or less an old-school black metal project, but with the touch of that occultic edge that 1980s Mayhem had.

From the first untitled Burzum demo, this is "Lost Wisdom"

Vikernes put out two untitled demos in 1991 under the Burzum name.  They included many songs which went on to become classics, such as "Lost Wisdom," "Spell of Destruction," "A Lost Forgotten Sad Spirit," and "Feeble Screams From Forests Unknown."  Many of these songs were instrumental, with no vocals.  Nonetheless, they highlighted the emerging Norwegian sound.  Bearing resemblance to what Mayhem had done up to this point, while maintaining some uniqueness, these Burzum tracks helped lay the template for many black metal bands to come.

This is from the 1992 self-titled album...

As is known,  Burzum recorded all of what would become his classic nineties material in the span of about a year. Recorded in January of 1992, Burzum first released a self-titled album.  This was put out on Euronymous's label Deathlike Silence Productions.  In terms of black metal sound, the self-titled album was a continuation of the the sound pioneered on the demos, but at the same time an improvement.  I think that Vikernes' vocals were more tortured, more insane-sounding than pretty much any other black metal vocalist up to that point in history.  That first album is one of black metal's all-time greats. It's simple, yet raw and merciless in its effect.

Recorded as part of two different sessions in 1992, Burzum put out an EP entitled Aske (which is the Norwegian word for 'ashes') in early 1993. Also released through Deathlike Silence Productions, this is one of the few Burzum releases with another musician on it. Samoth (of Emperor) played bass on Aske because for a brief while, Varg entertained the idea of playing live. He did not hold on to that notion for long. 

"Key to the Gates" is from Det Som Engang Var

Burzum's second full-length album was Det Som Engang Var. Recorded in April 1992, this album feels conceptually linked to the self- titled one. With music that still feels raw and primitive, DSEV is as good an introduction to Burzum as any. This album was released in 1993 through Varg's new label, Cymophane Records (which was a sublabel of white power label Resistance Records). It was pressed in a limited run (950 copies), so this resulted in many bootleg editions in circulation. 

From Burzum's 1994 album, this is "Inn I Slottet Fra Droemmen"

Burzum's third album was recorded in the fall of 1992. It took a while for this album to get released because Varg's legal troubles began mounting. He signed the rights to his last two albums over to a third party who then founded Misanthropy Records.  Once this dust settled, this album--titled Hvis lyset tar oss--was released by Misanthropy in April 1994. It felt like a departure from the previous two. Yes, the primitivism was still present, but we see a real transcendence being achieved on some of these tracks. In this way, it foreshadowed what was to come on Burzum's fourth full-length album. 

My favorite Burzum song,  "Darkness (Dunkelheit)"

Burzum's fourth full-length studio album--titled Filosofem--was recorded in early 1993. By his own admission, he was rebelling against the new developments in the black metal scene and this made its way into the recording sessions. He once called this album an "anti-black metal" album. But by rebelling against some of the emerging trends in the black metal scene, he merely set a new bar for black metal!  The raw production, the hypnotic riffs, the droning ambient...all of these things took Burzum's black metal to another level entirely. Many say that Hviss lyset tar oss is in the running for greatest black metal album of all time, but I place Filosofem higher. It was released through Misanthropy Records in 1996, after Varg had begun serving his jail sentence for his crimes (church burning, Euronymous's murder).

And this is as good a place as any to pause the story of Burzum. As is widely known, he was able to put out two fully ambient albums while in prison (while in prison, he claimed to have sworn off guitar-based music forever), but that doesn't interest me. Perhaps I'll resume his story where it picks up when he was released from prison....? We'll see.

This song was recorded during the Hvis lyset tar oss sessions but never made it to album

Select Discography:

Demo I (1991)

Demo II (1991)

Burzum (demo) (1991)

Burzum (full-length) (1992)

Aske EP (1993)

Det som engang var (full-length) (1993)

Hvis lyset tar oss (full-length) (1994)

Filosofem (full-length) (1996)

Next time: NECROPHOBIC

Immortal

 

The legendary Norwegian scene of the early 1990s continues to astound us, even to this day. It is hard to imagine black metal of any shape or size without the groundbreaking work done by IMMORTAL, for example. After his stints in both Old Funeral and Amputation, Abbath went on to form Immortal with Demonaz in 1990.  They were initially more death metal than black metal, as is evident on the 1991 self titled demo.  It wasn't until the Immortal 7" EP (also released in 1991) that they changed their style to something more recognizably black metal.

"The Cold Winds of Funeral Frost" is off of the self-titled 7-inch

Immortal's sound clearly owed a debt to the sound of late 1980s and early 1990s Mayhem, but at the same time, it was a unique style.  Elements of Bathory (think Under the Sign of the Black Mark) also being present, Immortal went on to release a full-length album in 1992.  Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism is one of the best 1990s Norwegian black metal debut albums.  Immortal set themselves apart from the hordes of other black metal bands because they incorporated winter-themed lyrics.  Winter, cold, frost, and other climatic elements made perfect sense given Norway's harsh and unforgiving weather.

"Call of the Wintermoon" is one of Immortal's best known early songs

The big shift for Immortal in these earlier years was with the release of 1993's Pure Holocaust.  This album continued some of the stylistic elements of the material from Diabolical and the self-titled 7-inch, but at the same time, Immortal began to push the black metal style forward.  Blastbeats were featured prominently, and the overall speed was ratcheted up a notch unlike almost any other black metal band before this time.

This is "Storming Through Red Clouds and Holocaustwinds"

When Immortal released this album on the world, it truly changed the black metal landscape forever.  There had been fast black metal before (think Sarcofago, for example), but no one had put blastbeats into black metal to such a degree before.  Pure Holocaust stands, in my mind, as one of the technical highlights of all Norwegian black metal--indeed, of all black metal PERIOD.

While Pure Holocaust is one of their most influential albums, I hold that Battles in the North (Immortal's 1995 follow-up) is the superior release. On Holocaust, you can hear Immortal still figuring out what to do with and where to put their blastbeats. There are numerous places where the speed and blastbeats feel like an afterthought. Battles, on the other hand, had songs that were meticulously crafted, and the speed felt necessary and intentional. With each release, the black metal world was forced to sit up and take notice as Immortal changed the game again and again. Battles in the North, to my ears, ranks as a pure masterpiece of the highest order

Here is the title track from '95's Battles in the North

With their next release (1997's Blizzard Beasts), Immortal sought to push the boundaries of the sound they had innovated. Gone were the well-structured songs of Battles. Instead, the blastbeats were used to achieve a chaotic, almost tech-death approach. This album proved divisive among fans. Some loved how over-the-top it was, but some saw it as a step backwards from Battles.

"Winter of the Ages" showcases the insanity of Blizzard Beasts

This was a transitional time for Immortal, as Demonaz had to step down from his guitar-playing duties due to severe tendonitis in his arms. He was unable to play the extremely fast black metal riffing that Immortal's music required and was now relegated to the role of writer. This was also the time frame when drummer Horgh joined the band, and remained their long-time drummer  (they had had a rotating cast of drummers prior to him). But more change was on the horizon.

That change took the form of their 1999 album, At the Heart of Winter. A radical shift in their sound, this album managed to be too radical in sound for some of the old-school fans. But at the same time, many saw this as Immortal's peak. The album managed to incorporate all of the elements from previous albums, but the song structures clearly drew on Viking-era Bathory and classic heavy metal. Listen to the gorgeous soundscape that is "Withstand the Fall of Time":

This is off of 1999's At the Heart of Winter

2002's Sons of Northern Darkness gave us the masterful "Antarctica"

Immortal fully embraced this new sound on their next two albums, 2000's Damned in Black and 2002's Sons of Northern Darkness. Epic, sprawling black metal that meandered across multiple motifs, all while bringing to mind the inevitable evil of a true fimbulwinter is how I think of Immortal in this phase. Sons of Northern Darkness showed the world what black metal was capable of, in terms of artistry.

That said, this began a time of uncertainty for Immortal. They broke up not long after the release of Sons. In the following years, they would re-unite and break up several more times. This culminated in a legal battle for the rights to the name of the band, as Demonaz and Abbath had competing ideas about the future direction of Immortal. Demonaz did eventually win the legal battle, and he and Horgh are now the current core of Immortal. 

Select Discography:

Immortal (demo) (1991)

Immortal 7" (1991)

Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism (full-length) (1992)

Pure Holocaust (full-length) (1993)

Battles in the North (full-length) (1995)

Blizzard Beasts (full-length) (1997)

At the Heart of Winter (full-length) (1999)

Damned in Black (full-length) (2000)

Sons of Northern Darkness (full-length) (2002)

All Shall Fall (full-length) (2009)

The Seventh Date of Blashyrkh (live video) (2010)

Next time: UNLORD