Review Summary: A vastly misunderstood great dungeon synth album.
How I see almost everyone viewing this album is either who Vargs Vikernes is or comparing it to other Burzum albums, instead of trying to understand it as something completely different.
If you walk into this with a closed mind and expectations of black metal, you don’t know anything about this album. This is nowhere near black metal. So get that out of your head first.
Now that is out of the way, context for this album is needed. This is the first of the two ‘prison albums’ of Varg’s discography. Varg was sentenced to prison for a variety of deplorable acts, namely the murder of Euronymous and multiple church burnings. Varg still had the passion to create music, but all he had was a cheap synth and a tape recorder. So he tried his best with the little he had.
If the entire album was the title track alone, I could see why a 1-1.5 would be deserved. One of the main ingredients of this album is well put together loops repeated to create a convincing atmosphere, but in this track none of that happens. The loops are not very good and the cheesy default synth instruments don’t make it any better. I almost laughed the first time I listened to it. On top of all of that it's almost 9 minutes long.
Thankfully, it gets a whole lot better after that.
It mostly focuses on more whimsical soundscapes to invoke mental images of medieval Europe, which it does a pretty good job in that regard. At times it does interest me a lot more than it normally would, mainly with Hermoðr á Helferð.
The final half of this album is this album at its absolute best, focusing on solemn and melancholic atmospheres with great loops well put together.
Illa tiðandi starts the second half. It's a ten minute track that's slow and solemn, with it being quite repetitive. But I think this works greatly into its atmosphere.
Móti Ragnarokum is debatably even better. The balance between melancholic and uplifting makes this a very powerful, emotional track. It’s a very rare track that I could listen to over and over again, and shows why this album should be given a chance.
This final half makes you feel such feelings such as isolation and loneliness. It may sound pretentious or that I’m overhyping it, but not very much music sells me this much emotionally.
I understand the passion to create music with very few tools at your disposal, and I feel that this is a solid attempt to get his vision into form. I can also understand the complaints about it, mostly that it’s way too repetitive at times. It just depends if you vibe with it or not. Give it a shot.
But it is a shame that things had to pan out the way they did to get this slab of dungeon synth.
It's not ‘worthy’ of the Burzum name because it’s not Burzum.
Recommended Tracks: Hermoðr á Helferð, Illa tiðandi, Móti Ragnarokum.
