999.
Album title: Filosofem
Artist: Burzum
Nationality: Norwegian
Year: 1996
Genre: Black Metal, Dark Ambient
Chronology: 3 of 12
What this album means to me: This was one of the first albums on which I realised black metal, as such, could be awe-inspiring and breath-taking. It gave me quite a problem, due to its being created by a known murderer and Nazi who liked burning down churches. I’m still struggling with that today, to be honest.
Highlights: Pretty much all of it
Lowlights: None; could do without the scratchy, screeching vocal, but then, this is black metal
Lyric of the album: Not a chance, pal! ????
Like I say above, this album, and this artist, produces a real moral dichotomy in me. Can I reconcile the man’s many crimes and his outspoken far-right, neo-Nazi views with the gloriously gorgeous music I find here? The only real answer I found was that I couldn’t, in all honesty and fairness, having listened to this just dismiss it on the ground of his political views and actions. It has been a long time since I had heard anything quite so ethereally beautiful, and really I sort of felt like someone being ushered through the black flaming doors of Hell into a room where the most stunning and emotional music I had ever heard was playing. Conflicted? You bet your (after)life I was.
But I managed to, with some difficulty - put to one side the man and his beliefs, to say nothing of his crimes (which, I suppose to be fair to him, he has paid for - it’s not like he literally got away with murder, and hey, it was only Euronymous, who wanted to die anyway). Sorry if that’s insensitive, but a man who inhales a dead crow before going on stage every night was never going to be long for this world, not that that excuses murder. It raises valid questions though. If a serial killer paints beautiful paintings, should we praise him as an artist? Can we divorce the man from his crimes, and more to the point, should we? Are we, in some ways, condoning those crimes by saying but look at the good he did! It’s a question I wrestle with a lot, and to be honest I have yet to come up with an answer.
But music like this simply can’t be ignored. I suppose, had I not known who Varg Vikernes was (thanks Batty) I might have felt differently about this album and just enthused about it. I still do. Enthuse, that is. But it’s with a certain sense of guilt, not that that stops me either listening to it or recommending it. Which I do. Recommend, that is. If you like haunting, challenging, soothing and sometimes shocking music. Don’t expect to understand the lyrics though, what there are of them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-ZVkESecXk