BURZUM — Fallen (review)

BURZUM — Fallen album cover Album · 2011 · Atmospheric Black Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
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 sung/played by Varg Vikernes.

Stylistically the music on the album 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 more personal dimension to the vocal delivery. I guess that´s probably lost on listeners who don´t understand Norwegian, but personally I almost always find the use of native languages in metal irresistibly charming.

"Fallen" features 7 tracks. 5 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 pretty brilliant to my ears. A track like "Vanvidd" is even outstanding. It took me a while to appreciate the thin sounding production and actually spot the bass in the mix, but it´s a sound that suits the rawness of the music, and it´s not noisy and muddy in an unpleasant way.

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 exactly 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 simple approach work in favour of the dark atmosphere although I personally could have wished for a fill or two now and again. Despite a few issues "Fallen" is a overall a very strong album by Burzum and a 4 star (80%) rating is deserved.
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