Exactly. Thank you.

http://www.last.fm/music/Bumzur/Flan

I guarantee it won't top this.

Okay. All is made clear. Thank-you for that post, awheio.

Leaked today. I'm in the 3rd track and its pretty much in the same line as Fallen.

So, it leaked already.


I think it's the weirdest Burzum album yet, and frankly, after the first listen I don't even know what to call it, it's just bizarre.

The few actual metal/black metal songs are okay. They'll probably grow on me, but god, even they're odd. It's kind of like circus music with a black metal guitar tone at times. To be fair, the metal songs on here are probably more memorable than much of his previous post-prison work, but it's still very un-Burzum like.

The last half of the album literally sounds like someone playing with a guitar and talking; there are no drums or bass. 6/11 tracks on the album have no instruments but guitar or ambient noises and talking.

Way too much of his "loud whispering" and clean vocals. And talking to music.

When I listen to it in the future, I'll probably just skip the talking/ambient shit and call it a mini album. Maybe I'm just an uncultured fuck but I can't stand 11 minute tracks of ambient noise or 7 minute tracks of a guy strumming a guitar and singing opera-like music in a language I don't understand. Then again, I skip the old ambient/guitar wankery songs too.

To be fair, here's my favorite song after the first listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEQyV1gyM_Y

Just listened to Hit Helga Tre. I actually enjoy it, it's not like his old stuff I prefer but it's still pretty good.

This album is beautiful. It starts out straight up viking metal but then just gets slower, slower, and SLOWER and super depressing/emotional as it goes on. Very unique album.

It's basically a new ambient style album, just with guitar and vocals instead of keyboards.

Definitely more vocal driven than any Burzum album, it makes the repetitiveness easier to digest.

Also, his annoying whisper-harsh vocals from the previous two albums are greatly improved.

I'm surprisingly liking this release a hell of a lot.

It reminds me of dark-folk like Tenhi and Sol Invictus.

This is pretty cool so far, but I haven't made it to the second half. I like the vocals, and the 14 second scream in Æra really surprised me. I'm really exhausted and high right now so I'll give this more listens in the coming days to form a better opinion.

EDIT: Just finished it. Hmm, definitely going to take a few more listens to click. I appreciate what Varg's doing here, but I wonder if the vocals obscure/dominate the music a bit too much (though I guess that's what he was going for).

I'm listening to the samples now and it sounds pretty promising, actually. The stranger, even more ambient-y approach could work very well. I liked the clean vocals so if there's more of them that's cool, too.

Hmmm, a few of these sound a bit more "riffy". Perhaps not in a typical black metal sense, but maybe just a bit more involved on the guitar front. Definitely sounds like it's going to be an interesting listen.

Going to listen to it later today, but before I do, can anyone tell me how the songs relate to being a HUNTER:

http://www.burzum.org/eng/gallery11.php

The riff in the song Stabwound posted is very good, but fuck, like all Burzum since Det Som Engang Var it gets incredibly boring after a while. He's an incredibly crappy songwriter.

I'm inclined to agree. The album is a tad worse than Belus (never heard Fallen), which was already pretty shit to begin with. I kind of liked Gullaldr though. It's the only song on the album where he gets the 'ambient' stuff right.

Same here, Fallen was a huge letdown and the re-recording album didn't get a second listen from me so I wasn't expecting anything but I was positively surprised. Makes me want to listen to this more, while with Fallen I got the feeling that "I guess I should listen to more", which I didn't do that much. I like the "narrative" feel and I think this has the feeling of "wholeness" which Varg explained in the description of the album. The vocals are very good too, the cleans are much better than with the last one. For sure this is a slow-paced album but captivating. Maybe in the end gets a bit more boring, and "Gullaldr" was a song on which I thought this could be a bit shorter.

After my first initial listening, I liked this quite a bit. I really liked how each song gets progressively slower and slower throughout the album. Whereas I haven't found a true standout track yet, I think it's probably something that definitely needs to be listened to front-to-back to appreciate, at least for me.

After listening a few times, I like it more than my first impression. It does have a more relistenable value than Fallen, and it's also more memorable. If you asked me to name a song from Fallen I don't even think I could do it. I liked Belus better, though.

The ambient songs... they're okay, but I'm not a huge fan. He's going to make the kind of music he wants to, though.

I almost wonder if this isn't the final mix of the album, because it's months early and the vocals seem very loud in the mix, like mentioned. The leaked version is also only 192kbs which I'm sure doesn't help things.

It's not like Burzum's music is particularly hi-fi, though...

192 kbps shouldn't be that detrimental to sound quality. Most people can't really discern between 192 and higher.

In before "I once had 320 it was total shit with transient smearing etc", you're either abnormally sharp-eared, abnormally pretentious or you had a transcode.

Whoa! This album sucks, one of those corkers where you forget it's on, until some annoying part like, say, endless talking over the music, pops up to remind you it's playing. You know, take the best parts of Belus, Fallen and this album which has the occasional riff that is decent (but gets repeated so many times it loses whatever effectiveness it might have been capable of), and you could have a decent album. Definitely not picking this one up, and I bought Depths Of Darkness, which I would rather listen to than Umskiptar.

Seems we have a quantity over quality thing going on here, just like the original Masters Of The Universe action figures!

This is the perfect one-sentence summary of my initial listening experience too.

Hahahaha what the fuck?

I usually like Varg's promo shots, even the cheesy ones, but this goes beyond that. This is embarrassing.

I agree about the photo shoots, usually Varg's way more tasteful than that. What the absolute fuck, that's just hilarious.

EDIT: You know what, he basically began Burzum as an offshoot to his LARPing interests, so maybe not that much has changed.

You know what else is fucked? Fallen came out March 2011, this new one was recorded in September 2011, not to mention he recorded that re-recorded album in between. It's quite likely he has the bulk of another album already written.

Varg needs to fight Darken and it needs to be documented in "Cronos versus Thor" comic book form.

Him not wearing any shoes makes it feel even more akward.

Varg probably has 4-5 albums recorded already and is lurking around a nude beach in Cannes.

I would like to take the time to say that the above post is a thing of beauty. Bravo, sir.

hahahaha, I agree. It's terrible but I can definitely picture it.

Jandek black metal.

-

Admittedly the Sol Invictus comparison has me intrigued. Until then ...

I like it. It seems like the transition from Belus to Fallen was just building up to this. Like this is the sound he's been searching for since he got out of prison.

OH MY GOD.

I thought it was really fucken good!

Why does Varg look like he's 60 years old?

Skaldic metal? da hell is that? Listening to it on youtube atm and its not too bad.

I don't like it, imo it's nothing special.

Looks like he's taken inspirations from Rob Darken. Although that isn't quite that level yet:



The album is definitely good, I really like the direction he took. Moving further away from black metal sound (as much as I loved his early albums), this album infact already feels more like a pagan metal record than black metal one. And while I'm not a fan of his ambient albums/later Filosofem, I actually like the chill tracks on this album.