Burzum
Det Som Engang Var

THE REVIEW

Reviewing a Burzum album is not easy; it's not like reviewing any black metal album. Beyond the subjective listening of each of his albums, there are many things to objectify. Beyond the fact that when his project was born in 1991, black metal was practically in its embryonic phase, and right at this time, he immediately adopted an experimental perspective. Beyond the fact that he was the first to use lyrics in his native language and to revolutionize lyrics that usually dealt with death metal themes and bland down-to-earth sensations tied to darkness and mysticism. Beyond the fact that he was the first to bring a national-romantic spirit, taking the artworks of the 19th-century Norwegian painter Theodor Kittelsen, who was then tremendously targeted in a consistent manner by Norwegian and Swedish bands and somewhat inconsistently by French and Italian bands. Beyond the fact that extreme metal was still based on the simplicity of punk and pop with classic rhythmic metrics rit1-rit2-chorus-rit1-bridge-solo-chorus, at most enriched with 2-3 more solos and 2-3 bridges, he was perhaps the first to deconstruct the song's structure and return to a 70s approach (no offense to the fans – including myself – of King Crimson and Caravan). Beyond the fact that from 1991 to 1993 he composed four complete albums, each more beautiful than the last…

…“Det Som Engang Var - What Once Was,” is the second album of the Burzum project and the first one I bought. I had never heard a voice like that, and I can assure you that it won't easily leave your mind. Many say that Kurt Cobain's voice is the cry of a generation. Taking this similarity, I can say that Varg's voice is the cry of despair of a scarred nation. In the lyrics of all his albums, there are themes converging with the Nordic situation and their forced loss of archaic spiritual ties, and it can be understood from the first words of Key To the Gate, alongside eternally distorted melodies (Varg is famous for never adjusting his guitar; his first two albums are notorious for the inability to reproduce them sonically identical). A heartbreaking solo concludes the song, making way for the following En Ring Til å Herske, also freely interpreted from Tolkien's sagas as in the first album. Another magnificent and simple mid-tempo song, “Lost Wisdom” addresses the enigmas of life “While we might believe that our world, our reality, is what it is, it is anything but a manifestation of essence.” After a couple of instrumental tracks, the ambient “Han Som Reiste” and the melancholic “Når Himmelen Klarner” the album leaves us with the last sung song “Snu Mikrokosmos Tegn”, tremendously dark and tremendously expressive. The album concludes with an outro in the same line as the intro, but with a melody that will later be resumed in the final Hlidskjalf.

The peculiarity of Burzum's albums is that each stands alone, but with concepts that continue from the first to the last; the songwriting is different on each album, the melodies are different on each album, but that sublime music and those Apollonian lyrics that conceal that veiled melancholy are always there and perhaps this is why listening to them you can say they are totally outside of black metal; they are on another planet, there is something too big behind them to be lumped together with the masses.