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Hey guys 2011 is a year with music too.

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SWOON! at My Gravitas:
Early impressions of the new Burzum album, from someone who had only previously heard Hvis Lyset Tar Oss:

I obviously can't compare Fallen to other Burzum records, but it sounds in a way unlike any black metal I have heard before.  The riffs are pretty stock 2nd wave material (which doesn't necessarily mean bad), but the atmosphere this record carries is very interesting.  All of the surface elements of black metal are there, but the bile is completely absent.  This is black metal without ire, Satan, or fuck.  Hell, it's relaxing, all soft edges and pastel colours, much like the cover art.  You don't listen to this record in the middle of a forest during winter over a chalice of goat blood, it's for relaxing on a veranda on a warm spring morning with a cup of tea or some shit

I can't say yet as to whether I think this is a great record, or even a particularly good one, but props to Varg for making something that is somehow both quite like and quite unlike anything I have ever heard

KharBevNor:
With Belus, I think you had a number of problems. For a start, Varg hadn't been in a recording studio or even touched a guitar for sixteen years. He was relearning his craft, probably working out some ideas that had been ticking over in his mind for a very long time; whether he should have released these efforts is another matter, but hey. Furthermore, Varg had (presumably) been almost completely isolated from music culture for a lot of that time; he spent a great deal of that period denouncing black metal and saying he would never play it again, remember, despite the fact that some of the interviews in which he described these views may be apocryphal; there are a number of Varg Vikernes interviews floating about that he has explicitly stated he never granted, and which contain glaring factual errors (one talks in the introduction about Vargs cell window overlooking a forest, despite him being at the time in a prison on an island in a cell which looked over the yard), and a number more which are suspect. Anyway, Belus to me smacked of a man who has been out of touch for a long time basically rehashing themes of his adolescent output, but without the vitality or relevance they had back then; after all, part of what makes Burzum such a touchstone is its huge influence on a range of traditional, atmospheric, pagan, depressive, ambient and so on black metal bands. With Fallen, it seems to me Varg is not only becoming more comfortable with the process of making music and trying out new ideas (Clean vocals!) but he also seems to be reconnecting with and listening to more music that came out whilst he was in prison. Probably not just black metal (Varg is known to have tastes that include electronica and Dead Can Dance), but there is a definite sense coming through in Fallen that Varg is now aware of developments in the folk/black/pagan/viking milieu, and is aiming towards developing an individual and distinctive voice again. There are moments of genius shining through once again on this album, I think, and memorable tracks. Jeg Faller is really nice.

What I personally think the music really needs is for the keyboard to come back, and slightly more adventurous song structuring. The keyboards could be used sparingly (I'm not quite suggesting he becomes Summoning) to provide flourishes and texture, whilst the songs could benefit from more sudden changes of direction, crescendos etc.

All in all, this album gets me excited for what the next one will sound like.

JD:
It's kinda neat playing Filosofem and Fallen together. Quite a contrast.

squawk:
new tvotr in the spring

valley_parade:

--- Quote from: KharBevNor on 06 Feb 2011, 17:52 ---but there is a definite sense coming through in Fallen that Varg is now aware of developments in the folk/black/pagan/viking milieu
--- End quote ---

Yeah, there were bits where I thought I was listening to a Vintersorg album.


--- Quote ---Jeg Faller is really nice.
--- End quote ---

Probably my favorite song off of Fallen.

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