Burzum's New Record - Belus

Countless people have spent huge portions of their lives locked up in prison. A handful of them have grown stronger during it. Ghandi developed and strengthened many of his ideas and movement while being imprisoned by the British Empire. Bay Area rap innovator and legend Mac Dre went to prison and completely revolutionized rap after his release. (I’m wondering what ‘lil Wayne’s going to be like once he gets out.) Timothy Leary in an interview from prison said that the best philosophers often end up in prison, just like the best baseball players end up in the major leagues or how the most successful politicians end up in Washington. In other words, prison time can be a test of strength and determination. But obviously this isn’t true for everybody who goes to prison. This is especially untrue for Black Metal musician Varg Vikernes.

When Vikernes went to prison for the extremely brutal murder of his bandmate Øystein Aarseth, he spent fifteen years locked up in a Norwegian prison. He spent those fifteen years writing and releasing some of the worst electronic music ever put to record. When he wasn’t writing music he was developing racist, mystical, and quasi-Nazi philosophy. In May of 2009 he was released from prison. So what was his next move going to be? Put out another record. One that sounds just like the music he wrote right before his imprisonment.

A much younger Varg Vikernes posing in Black Metal style.

This disappointed me. Because when I heard he got out of prison I thought: “woah, I wonder what his next record is going to sound like.” I should have guessed that I had basically already heard it before: slow, distorted and drawn-out songs with a few fast ones thrown in there. Apparently when he entered the soft, pillowy Norwegian prison cell, he entered a creative time-warp. Maybe he needed to get his ass kicked or tortured a little.

Actually, while writing this article, I realized one thing about Varg Vikernes and his one-man band Burzum: his act was never about the music. His intense fans are made up of mainly black metal dabblers, neo-nazis, and fantasy-novel/Lord of the Rings fans. (And infinite overlaps of those categories.) His popularity has always come from his extremely rash, violent and foolish actions. Example — his second album, Aske, gained notoriety because of it’s cover: a photo of an extremely old church that Vikernes supposedly burned down. His mainstream infamy comes from his murder of Aarseth. (Vikernes stabbed Aarseth in the back, chest and skull roughly twenty-two times as he was trying, unsuccessfully, to run away.)

Filosofem - Front Cover

The only thing left to wonder about this album is: why even make this album? It’s so similar to his only relative musical success, Filosofem. Only Belus is filled with inferior songwriting and lacks the bizarre, dungeon-sounding 25-minute electronic track that is found on Filosofem. Lots of hardcore Burzum fans are complaining about the fact that the entire album is entirely written in Norwegian. As if his vague racist lyrics were ever interesting or worth anything in the first place. In an interview Vikernes was asked to compare Belus to the rest of his music. He replied: “The production is better, and the sound too, but it does not stand out too much from the other metal albums. It’s still raw and unpolished, and exactly like I want it to be.”

Mediocrity. I guess with Varg Vikernes, if you take away the gimmicks and infamy, that’s all you’re left with. Even down to the cover art. The only new thing that Burzum fans will get from Belus is a new Burzum logo. Maybe that’s the real reason this album was made besides money and … well … just the hell of it.