Burzum
Filosofem

[So: the author of the album being reviewed here has expressed and continues to express political positions and has committed (and incites others to commit) actions that DeBaser finds repugnant. In the end, however, it is about music: hence, we still publish the review. /DeBaser]

The music of Burzum is not just music like any other. It has never been. When dealing with Burzum, the very concept of music changes: it becomes the psychological and mental portrait of a man, allowing us to delve into his soul, into his inner torment.
Varg Vikernes was in prison when he wrote this album. There, he had the opportunity to use a computer and read books. "Filosofem," ultimately, can be considered an album that also stems from his readings on Nordic legends, his beliefs, and his deep political ideologies. According to Vikernes, ultranationalist politics is the only one that can heal Scandinavian society (and Norwegian society in particular). His practice is a return to origins, to the spirituality that was characteristic of this land during the Viking era. He renounces Satanism as he considers it a residue of that Christianity which, with its arrival, completely corrupted and eroded the souls of men through the imposition of false and pre-set moral schemes.
Of course, the whole worldview according to Vikernes' philosophy can be shared or not, but the fact remains that, although Vikernes can be regarded as one wishes (crazy, criminal, or poet), one cannot deny that he had his own genius, however unhealthy and diseased, and above all, one must wonder what turn his life and career would have taken if he had not committed that murder (Euronymous, guitarist of Mayhem, 23 stab wounds to the neck, August 1993).

It's impossible not to ask these questions while listening to "Filosofem." Honestly, this is an album I love, a work as it should be, as a pure expression of the soul of the artist who produced it. An album absolutely impossible to listen to for those who do not possess a perspective that allows them to truly understand music profoundly.
The soundscape is entrusted to the distortions that constitute the true driving force of the work and outline its beauty: distortions so intense that they cover the melody in such a way that only a small fragment, a glimpse can be received, distortions that tear, that suffocate, that leave no way out and that invest and engulf everything, every assurance, every hope. The few keyboard notes serve very little, if their intent is to lighten this profound emotional charge.
Burzum's voice in "Filosofem" is the pure representation of despair, far from the fierce barking of "Det Som...," theoretically more human, but filtered, unhealthy, and merely heartbreaking. The suffocating and destabilizing mood that this album arouses in those who listen to it is something indescribable. The rhythm of the guitar and drum machine, obsessive, redundant, disturbing, oppresses to the extreme. The song titles are in German, although the singing is in English and Norwegian, with "Gebrechlichkeit," divided into two parts, standing out in particular, meaning "Decrepitude." It represents Burzum's disdain more explicitly: Christianity has degraded the world, and now people, instead of dying on battlefields, find themselves dying in their beds. By many, it could be considered the most desperate song ever written in the history of music: slow, oppressive, obsessive in an inconceivable way, where the voice and guitar alone truly transform into an expression of inner torment; the same riff, cadenced and tremendously lacerating in its advance, is carried on for 8 minutes, where every single minute counts for 30, with a psychedelic glimpse in the background that further helps to outline this enormous heaviness translated into music... Something absurd, only he could write such a song.

Those who know they have this capability must dare to listen to "Filosofem": soon they will be captivated by the irresistible sick charm that only an album like this can evoke.