I mean, that is just your opinion. I think Burzum stands well above all of those bands and so do many others. I am not a kid anymore, I don't give a damn about the controversy. I think the music is great and even some of his post prison stuff is pretty good. Burzum was a truly unique band in the 90s. i remember when I heard the vocals from the first two albums for the first time. It was unlike anything, out of this world.

I rather get the idea that the metal archives is occasionally turning into the moral archives.



Interesting idea, but I don't buy it. Some folks tend to be great musicians and happened to be shitty people.



Ulver, really? This silly band hardly had an idea of what they wanted to play in their early years.

As for the OP's question: I listen to the first 4 Burzum albums once in a while, sure.

Calling Burzum mediocre then praising Ulver is some funny shit.

I mean I can understand if you don't like Burzum and do enjoy the other bands, but Ulver is the epitome of style-over-substance, weak ass black metal, and I say that as someone who actually likes Ulver.

Burzum is one of the few of the original 90s Nordic bands I actually like along with Mayhem. And I e tried all the others mentioned. I know all their music is great but none of them clicked.

Ulver's third album is the black metal album supposedly recorded in a cabin in the woods but sounds like it's recorded in a trash can or something similar. Burzum is one of the originals whose style thousands of bands are failing to copy, including Ulver.

Yes. Hvis lyset tar oss is one of my favourite albums ever, with Det som en gang var being maybe the greatest black metal song of all time. I actually have a copy of this album with an additional song after Tomhet. Perfect album, perfect album cover, perfect everything. And Filosfem is one of the most influential albums ever. None of Vargs shitty views and opinions come through on the music

Yeah, Ulver try and do the whole pagan/atmospheric black metal thing on Bergtatt and Nattens madrigal, but neither of those are written as well as Burzum's best stuff. It's not even close, really. I actually really like both records for the atmosphere and sound they have, but riff-wise it's not even in the same league as Varg, or any of the other big Norwegian bands.

I don't listen to Burzum because I don't think he's got a single album worth listening back to back. If stuffing your classic albums with half hours of filler ambient is not style over substance I don't know what that is.



I think there is some level of truth to this, which also applies for Burzum too, or at least did. There was more allure and fascination to Burzum's story before Varg got a youtube account and killed all speculation by laying out how massive of an idiot he is. The fact that Jon killed himself before even having this chance has probably worked in his favor.

You know that this argument only applies for one of those albums, right?

30% of Hvis lyset tar oss is taken up by Tomhet so that makes two already. Mind you, the shitty ambient is just my biggest gripe with Burzum's discography, but not the only one.

The album also has arguably one of the greatest black metal songs of all time too. So there’s that. Personally I like Tomhet but hey it’s subjective right?

Do you work for Vice?

I just added a correction to Jon's case. I am not saying that the motive absolves him of his guilt or somehow diminishes it.

As for being drawn to the "darkness" of black metal, I think it's pretty well established that people are drawn to stories of crime and danger due to various psychological mechanisms. This is why crime fiction and true crime are among the most popular forms of entertainment in the world.

It's also pretty well established that those same things push a lot of metalheads away from BM too.

Perhaps there really are a lot of people who listen due to the music, not because of its "darkness".

Even then, it cannot be denied that heavy metal is a form of music heavily concerned with the darkness of human existence, which is directly reflected in the music itself and its use of minor chords. Just take the first Black Sabbath album, which is arguably the starting point for the entire genre.

That doesn't change just because the majority of listeners reject the idea of actively making those fantasies come true.

That's a whole different argument.

How so?

I don't listen Burzum, but I'm able to separate the person and his actions from his art, but I think it is understandable if some people can't.

Pointing out the metal is generally "dark" with minor chords is not the same as claiming most people are attracted to BM because of the crimes committed by 2nd wave BM artists.

Beat me to it. It's not like crime rates increased with 666% by the time that the world was exposed to Black Sabbath's Black Sabbath.

It's the same evolutionary mechanism of human psychology that attracts people to both, so of course it's related.

You continually make the oddest arguments.

One is the music itself being darker and in minor chords. The other is the musicians doing crime. If you enjoy metal for the music itself, the criminality of the musicians is going to be irrelevant. I agree that there are probably some people who decided to listen to Burzum or Mayhem due to the controversy, but I would bet money that very few CONTINUED listening due to the controversy and either stopped listening because they didn't like it, or continued listening because they did.

Being attracted to something and then pulling away from it because of moral issues doesn't change what attracted you to it in the first place, but if you sleep better at night thinking about it that way, I'm not keeping you awake.

That's not even close to what I said.

As Carl Jung so brilliantly argued, being attracted to anything dark is related to the shadow of our own psychology. Therefore, I don't even think it makes sense to divide the idea of being attracted to the darkness of music itself with being attracted to the darkness of life in general. I understand that some of the people participating in this discussion want others to understand that they are morally clean, but I don't believe that for a second. We all entertain the darkness of our own psychology all the time. Whether it's being fascinated by the morally reprehensible or indulging in revenge on those guilty of crimes.

So of course the crimes surrounding the Norwegian black metal scene and the powerful aesthetic of burning churches is a massive draw for the genre, which now has millions of streams after it all became part of pop culture, where bands used to only sell a few thousand CDs at most. To claim otherwise is just ignorant.

You're twisting my arguments, apparently so you can say things like "as Carl Jung so brilliantly argued".

You have to understand, he has prepared his argument very strongly in order to make himself look like an intellectual. So it was quite selfish of you not to answer exactly what he wants in order to him be able to refute you.

Seems like that's exactly what is happening...oh well, you know the old saying about winning an argument against an intelligent person right?

No, I'm not, I'm simply explaining why the crimes surrounding the Norwegian black metal scene are one of its most powerful attractions, and you're trying to deny that by arguing that you can enjoy the music for its own sake. I disagree with this as music is always a representation of something, and in black metal it is a representation of the shadow of human psychology. Consciously or unconsciously, you mirror Varg's emotional expression when you listen to Burzum, because that's how the brain works, and that's why people listen to music in the first place.

Regardless of what black metal purportedly represents, what you get when you listen to it is your own, second hand intepretation of what the musician tried to express, and in the absence of all the information of Varg's emotions and ideas your own emotional response to that music can never be a mirror, a reflection of his. Nor should it be, because that would be boring as shit.

It is of course an interpretation, but you still mirror Varg in the sense that he is the starting point for the whole experience.

It is not a mirror, you as an individual face the expression of the artist and respond to his work according to your criteria, your experience and your emotions, and depending on all that you will react to the work in one way or another.

A mirror is not a point though, it's a surface that offers a perfect reflection that leaves zero to be interpreted by the viewer. And still, you can start from one point and end up in a wildly different place than Varg ended up, or intended you to end up when he made the music. Your interpretation can be completely different than his, and in the case of most Burzum listeners, who probably will not share most of Varg's ideas, this will likely be the case.

Btw; I also believe that the morbid history of black metal is, at best, the means by which people's curiosity is first picked. Anyone who is a fan of black metal is obviously a fan of the music, and no amount of fascination for the extra-musical affairs of the inner circle will keep you around for long if you don't like the music, because there's better ways to satisfy that fascination without dealing with the obnoxious sounds.

Based on recent research into how we listen to music and why we appreciate it, I don't believe in such autonomy, but we don't need to get into that. Just think about what you just wrote and think about why people listen to music and then consider how little sense your statement makes.

What do you mean? They perfectly described how music is subjectively experienced between individuals. I listen to music for that exact reason, to find something that feels good to listen to and sounds cool.

Listening to music is receiving a communicative signal by evoking a representation of that signal in the listener's brain. It is therefore not as subjective an experience as one would think. Music is a ritual, and the musician is the shaman who controls the experience, not the listener.

It's ok, I just think that he and I see music in different ways, I listen every day at least to an album that I have never heard before because I like the feeling of discovering and exploring different expressions of different artists, I understand what he says that the artist is projecting in his work a part of his being, but most of the time I just don't know what is in the mind of the artist when he made such a work, I can feel certain emotions in the music of course, happiness, sadness, melancholy, fear etc but all at a superficial level, I am not aware of things like ideology, sexual orientation or traumas of an artist that I don't know just listening to his music if I don't know it beforehand or it is explicitly printed in the work, that's why I find it difficult to see it as a mirror as he says.

What research?

Well said, and this is why I believe Frozen is twisting my argument so he can rebut it with a preconceived argument that I'm not making. This seems pretty clear to me.

Wut. Seriously. This is just...absurd.

I guarantee you, without any hesitation or doubt that the way I hear metal is completely different than they way my mom hears it, you hear it, or really pretty much anyone else hears it and it's also certainly different than how the artist meant it to be heard in a lot of cases. It's art. It's ALWAYS subjective.
If metal, or music in general was "controlled" by the "shaman" (really?) then there would be a consensus on all music. If the artist controlled the listening experience then everyone would agree that St Anger is a fantastic album.