BURZUM — Belus (review)

Album · 2010 · Atmospheric Black Metal

3/5 · 2012-04-26
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 his years behind bars trying to obliterate what reputation he'd built up.

However, on leaving jail in 2009 Varg seemed 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 tried to put forward the idea that he was keeping his politics out of his music. Whilst it is true that this album focuses purely on retellings of Norse theology, I think it would be a mistake to see it as divorced entirely from Varg's political ideology; Varg's publications since his release from jail, including his blog posts, the documentary he made with his wife, his tabletop RPG and several albums, all document a worldview in which mythology, politics, and unorthodox theories about ancient history and culture are all intrinsically bound together so tightly that to separate one out from the others would feel in some ways to be disingenuous. Varg's religious beliefs are shaped by his politics and theories, Varg's theories are shaped by his religion and politics, Varg's politics are shaped by his religion and theories.

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 doesn't seem to suffer for the lack of the lo-fi aesthetic of the early albums.

At the time of its release, it felt really fresh to me, like the old devil had never been away after all. With the passing of time, it has faded next to Varg's pre-prison work, feeling a bit too much like a double retreading of old ground - the old Daudi Baldrs themes and ideas combined with an old school metal style. And ultimately, there's plenty of bands out there who are happy to give you metal inspired by Norse mythology, but who combine those themes with a profoundly fresher and more vibrant sound and less unfortunate baggage.

On top of that, although the album is not explicitly avowing far-right politics, I think we have seen over time that Varg is more than willing to use religion and mythology as a promotional and recruitment tool for his ideas, and he's been getting more and more blatant about that over time with his music (see the swastika pattern on the front of The Ways of Yore - yeah, sure, the swastika was an ancient symbol that the Nazis appropriated, but when it's used like that on an album by a guy who pretty much agrees with the Nazi program then you know full well that it's a dog whistle of some sort).

Belus does not feel like a sincere attempt to produce an excellent black metal album - in fact, at points it feels like Varg doesn't really dig metal that much except as a means of garnering a bit of extra money, and as the direction of his subsequent albums have shown he's been more than happy to abandon the genre entirely of late. Instead, it feels like a cynical attempt to sneak back into the scene and get some form of wider acceptance, by avoiding lyrical themes which, whilst integral to his religious worldview, Varg knows full well will turn off listeners, and by adopting a style of music Varg doesn't really believe in any more.

It's not flat-out incompetent, mind. But it isn't very special either.