Warthur The latest Burzum album seems to represent a clean break from the band’s past, heralding a change in musical style as radical as the one Bathory underwent between Under the Sign of the Black Mark and Blood Fire Death. It seems to be Varg Vikernes’ attempt at viking metal - appropriately enough, considering that the lyrics consist of a recitation of an ancient Icelandic poem - but bless him, the man just isn’t very good at it. The songs are somewhat too simplistic, over-long, and over-repetitive - and bear in mind this is from someone who really likes the 25 minute ambient track on Filosofem - and in general it’s not only not the sort of thing I expect from Burzum, but it also just isn’t very good judged on its own terms in isolation from everything else Varg has done in his career.

UMUR "Fallen" is the 8th full-length studio album by Norwegian black metal act Burzum. The album was released through Byelobog Productions in March 2011. As always all vocals and instruments are played by Varg Vikernes.

The music is atmospheric black metal with aggressive raspy harsh vocals as the dominant vocal style, but the album also features clean sung vocals and whispered talking type vocals. Varg Vikernes is a very convincing vocalist and the fact that the lyrics are in his native language also provides an extra dimension to the vocal delivery. I guess that´s mostly true to people who understand Norwegian (a group I belong to), but personally I find it irresistibly charming.

The album contains seven tracks. Five of those are relatively long atmospheric and repetitive black metal tracks, while one is an intro and one is an ambient/percussive track that closes the album ("Til Hel Og Tilbake Igjen"). The latter is a bit tedious, but the rest of the tracks are brilliant to my ears. A track like "Vanvidd" is outstanding IMO. It took me a while to appreciate the thin sounding production and spot the bass in the mix, but it´s like the longer I get into the album I get accustomed to the sound production and begin to spot details and appreciate the sound.

The musicianship is generally strong but I think it´s audible that Varg Vikernes is not a natural drummer and if he is it doesn´t show. The drums are very simple and repetitive in style and if there is a fill hidden somewhere on the album that I didn´t notice you´re welcome to enlighten me because I can´t find one. The simplicity of the drumming is at times almost to the point of being ridiculous, but for the most part Varg Vikernes makes this approach work.

"Fallen" is overall a very strong album that sounds unmistakably like Burzum and a 4 star (80%) rating is fully deserved.

Warthur If you look at the lyrics to Burzum's second post-jail album, and listen to Varg's tormented delivery, then you might be fooled into thinking that this account of a person's introspective self-searching might be the result of Varg finally beginning to feel some remorse for his various misdeeds. Of course, if you've read any recent interview with him you'll know that isn't the case at all, but even if he's still a shitty dude, at least he makes some really great music and doesn't try to use it to really push his agenda.

Once again, the electronic influences of earlier Burzum albums are more or less albsent; the concluding track is instead some sort of eerie folk piece which I believe might be performed on traditional instruments. Showing a bit more flair and originality than Belus, Fallen is Varg finally gathering momentum again; let's just hope this prolific run of albums he's one doesn't end like the last one.

Warthur The first four Burzum albums should have made Varg Vikernes one of the most critically acclaimed and widely appreciated figures in metal - but between his utterly pointless campaign of arson and murder of Euronymous, his outright stupid embrace and promotion of far-right politics from jail, and the recording of two horrible albums on cheap jailhouse keyboards, it seems as though Varg spent the better part of his decade trying to obliterate what reputation he'd built up.

However, on leaving jail in 2009 Varg seems intent on salvaging his artistic reputation. Despite still issuing nasty diatribes on his website which make it clear that he's still a reprehensible human being, Vikernes seems intent on keeping his politics out of his music, his albums since his release having focused purely on retellings of Norse theology (as on Belus) and highly abstract emotional musings (as on Fallen).

But is Belus any good? Well, yes it is. Reclaiming some of the material from the Casio albums and putting it into the metal context it had always cried out for, the album shies away from the electronic dabblings of Filosofem in favour of raw, dirty black metal noise. Not that the recording quality itself is raw - this is Burzum with decent production values at last, and interestingly the music still seems vibrant and exciting even without the lo-fi aesthetic of the early albums. In fact, it feels fresher than ever before, with the shoegaze-like wall of guitar noise tapping into experimental currents in modern black metal. It's like the old devil's never been away after all.

Phonebook Eater 9/10

"Filosofem" is a milestone album for Black Metal, and its influence is noticeable in many acts today.

The follow up to “Hvis Lyset Tar Oss” is another masterpiece on behalf of Burzum, at this point one of the best Black Metal artists of all time. “Filosofem” is not quite as praised as the previous LP, which is a landmark album for Metal music in general; however, “Filosofem” is still considered another Black Metal classic and an essential release for fans of the genre. This album, the last one before the imprisonment of Varg, is one of the biggest stones that supports the castle.

Again, I will say that Varg Vikernes’ actions and philosophical believes will not be mentioned in this review, because of course they don’t relate directly to the music, not even to some of the lyrics, which are more focused on isolation, desperation, pain, darkness, and admittedly, evil, mentioned in more than a few spots. This however is not a good reason to relate it to something like Satanism or being anti-religious in any way. Filosofem, in fact, means Philosopheme in English, proving how Varg is much more than what he shows to be.

The album’s production is famously raw and lo-fi: Varg, for his guitars, didn’t even use an amplifier, instead he decided to plug them in his brother’s stereo, and record them with again the cheapest equipment he could find. This shows how passionate and determined Vikernes was in attempting to do something quite abnormal, unsettling, and anti-aesthetic. The abrasive instruments, meaning the guitars and drums, at all times, like in the previous album, are accompanied by cold, enigmatic synth sounds that give the music an arcane and surreal imprint. It seems like in “Filosofem” however the keys are much more used overall, and the dedication to Ambient/non Black Metal pieces are much more than in “Hvis Lyst Tar Oss”. But the Metal moments are priceless, hypnotic, and especially dark; in all of it’s distorted fuzziness, “Filosofem” finds unquestionable beauty even in its ugliest places.

Burzum, being the most important artist of Atmospheric Black Metal ( “Hvis Lyset Tar Oss” being the absolute zenith of such genre), continues on with his vision with “Filosofem”: he concentrates almost entirely on creating a dark, haunting, and thought-provoking atmosphere rather than writing memorable songs with catchy riffs. But if in the 1994 release those forty five minutes seemed short and compressed, this 1996 release is the opposite, stretched out to almost 70 minutes, almost forty of which intensively atmospheric, giving to the LP a feeling of completeness by the overwhelmed listener.

The album starts off with the track “Burzum”, a perfect example of a typical song by the artist: repetitive riffs, subtle keyboards, shrieked vocals, and the unforgettable production. Same thing goes with “Jesus’ Death” and “Beholding The Daughters Of Firmament”, although this last track is much slower, much more melodic, eloquent and memorable, surprisingly enough. The more atmospheric part of the album (the point where the drums are no longer heard) starts with “Decrepitude 1”, a Black Metal song with no beats, a song suspended in air, giving an extremely gloomy atmosphere that is however one of the most fascinating ones of the entire album. The twenty five minute Dark Ambient track that follows has been subject to much controversy over the years, because of it’s extreme minimalism and repetition. But once again the aura Varg creates with his keyboards is sublime, and in this particular track I’m dared to say has the best atmosphere on this album. “Decrepitude 2” is the instrumental based entirely on the first part, with some slight modifications overall.

“Filosofem” is nothing less than a Metal masterpiece, that while not having the historical importance of “Hvis Lyset Tar Oss”, still maintains a superb quality, even in the songwriting, and maintains pretty much the same levels as Burzum's official magnum opus.