BURZUM — Det Som Engang Var (review)

BURZUM — Det Som Engang Var album cover Album · 1993 · Atmospheric Black Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
Warthur
Varg Vikernes had already slipped a little ambient music into Burzum's self-titled debut album, but on Det Som Engang Var - recorded a mere three months later - he turned this up a notch, creating what would prove to be a seminal blueprint for the atmospheric black metal subgenre. Mixing dark ambient tracks - the opening and closing tracks of the album, which are pretty good as far as dark ambient goes, and an interlude which tends a little too much towards the repetitive - with black metal tracks whose extended, buzzing, lo-fi guitar solos end up creating a kind of ambient effect all of their own, the album may not necessarily be very consistent, but the execution shows a step up from the more rudimentary debut album.

Varg's crackpot politics are largely kept safely out of the lyrics, though I don't blame anyone who finds Varg's rants, his clownish behaviour, or the fact that he murdered Euronymous to kind of spoil the album for them. Certainly, it's not as though there's a shortage of bands who don't have the same baggage who have not only taken the atmospheric black metal concept further, but also draw on sufficiently similar influences to Burzum as to make this rather inessential. You can see how it would have stood out in the early 1990s, but we have better options now.
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