Thoughts on listening to Burzum

The fifth song on “Sol Austan, Mani Vestan,” Burzum’s 10^th album is so breathtaking and angelic, it’s hard to fathom the guy who wrote it is deranged and delusional. How could someone so vile create such beauty?

Varg Vikernes, the sole member of the black metal band Burzum, is a murderer and church-burner, a racist and paranoid man who shouldn’t be idolized, and yet I can listen to his music and be so swept up in its emotionality I sometimes forget it’s the music of a disturbed individual. This central conflict, the man versus the music, is tough for me to wander through. Burzum brings me emotional releases I’ve never felt before, and does so in ways I haven’t gotten from similar bands. I know people who won’t listen to Burzum, who don’t want to support a violent and anti-Semitic individual. Which makes perfect sense. I agree with this view, and I respect people who avoid listening to Burzum on these grounds. Yet I can’t bring myself to actually turn the music off.

A presupposition I’ve accepted as a fan of Burzum is this, to put it simply: VARG VIKERNES  IS A FUCKED UP, AWFUL HUMAN BEING WHO DESERVES NO SYMPATHY BECAUSE HE IS A MONSTER. Clear enough? I’m not writing in defense of Varg (who I honestly believe has severe mental health issues that have aided in his atrocities), I’m writing more so to understand with why I can’t turn the music off.

I can vividly remember the moment when I first listened to Burzum. I had just finished watching “Until the Light Takes Us,” a fascinating documentary on the Norwegian black metal scene of the early 1990s. The title itself is an English translation of Burzum’s third album, “Hvis lyset tar oss,” which Varg explains in the film to mean being sucked up and ensnared by Christian society (the “light,” in this case). Varg would rather embrace the dark, where he sees true freedom and spirituality to be. (Note: Varg’s also very anti-Christian. He burned churches because he believes Christianity uprooted the ancient Norse culture that existed before Christianity reached Scandinavia. He thinks his actions are therefore symbolic. I think he’s full of shit and that church-burning is disgusting).

Since the documentary took its name from that album, I chose it as my starting point for delving into Burzum. I had never liked black metal before that point, as it seemed to me as nothing more than semi-organized noise. Lo-fi production, cringe-worthy vocals, with nothing memorable about it. Yet when the drums kicked in at the 2:48 mark, I found myself in a whole new world. That drumming pattern may likely be permanently engrained into my memory. The following riffs and overlain synths built up with incredible atmosphere of despair and angst. Soon the vocals follow, screeching, animalistic, incomprehensible howls. Pure, unfiltered, unrestrained, raw, bare. The essence of ennui.

This was strange and new to me. I dug more into Burzum’s discography, with the same results. Burmum’s black metal has impacted me more than any other BM band (though that could change as the blackgaze scene continues to develop). With the exception of “the “Aske” EP and half the songs off “Daudi Baldrs,” I don’t think Burzum has a single bad album (note: I haven’t listened to “From the Depths of Darkness,” because he just re-recorded old, pre-imprisonment songs that I don’t think need to be re-recorded). “Sol Austan, Mani Vestan” is another triumph, in my eyes. A bit long and repetitive, but its quiet minimalism relative to those charging drums and shrieks (SAMV is, like Burzum’s two other ambient works, an instrumental album) of “Hvis lyset tar oss” is a part of that.

Ambient music (specifically dark ambient) has been a part of Burzum since it began. Moody synthesizers fill the background of most Burzum songs, and there are a handful of entirely ambient songs sprinkled throughout most of the pre-prison album. “Daudi Baldrs” was the first attempt at a complete dark ambient album (though at that point he’s recorded enough ambient material for his pre-prison work to fill up a whole record), and given that recording whilst imprisoned is probably going to make the process quite challenging, it was pretty hit or (a very wide) miss with each song. “Hlidskjalf,” the second prison-made dark ambient album, was, on the other hand, a masterpiece.

“Sol Austan, Mani Vestan,” is another haunting, dark ambient masterpiece. This time recorded post-prison, the album quietly yet strongly evokes images and feelings of walking slowing through bare trees in a snowy wood, the moon overhead, with the silence of the chill air wrapped around you. There’s so much emptiness in the scene: the plants have died along with the leaves, all the birds have gone south, and the stillness from the lack of anything alive is baiting, But it quickly fills up with wonder about how there’s still so much beauty left, despite being bereft of life. It’s strange to feel so comfortable in such a place. This is the essence of what I emotionally achieve from the music of Burzum.

I can identify with the ennui/angst Varg no doubt feels, but not their causes. Am I allowed to do that? Is it ok to twist and reinterpret his music to suit my own wants? Is it immoral to listen to Burzum no matter what? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. And I don’t like that I don’t know.

I haven’t justified listening to Burzum, not to myself or to anyone else. I simply put it off and keep listening. Don’t take this writing as my trying to justify listening to Burzum and/or supporting Varg. It’s not meant to be. Varg is a monster who does not deserve to have his views supported or promoted. How can someone so monstrous make something so angelic and beautiful? I don’t know why I can’t turn the music off.