Burzum - Hvis Lyset Tar Oss - Reissue ..

D e B T i s S l a V 3 r Y S T u P i D
DuBi0uSlY EnDoWs YoU WiTh
Burzum-Hvis_Lyset_Tar_Oss-Reissue-2010-DeBT_iNT
ARTiST.... Burzum
TiTLE..... Hvis Lyset Tar Oss
LABEL..... Byelobog Productions
GENRE..... Black Metal
RiP.DATE.. 2011-05-03
STOREDATE. 2010-00-00
SOURCE.... CD
QUALiTY... 270 kbps / 4410kHz / Joint Stereo
TRACKS.... 4 / 44:28
SIZE...... 88.78 MB
RIPPER.... EAC Secure with LAME 3.98.4
URL.......
NR. TRACKNAME TiME
1 Det Som En Gang Var 14:21
2 Hvis Lyset Tar Oss 8:04
3 Inn I Slottet Fra Droemmen 7:51
4 Tomhet 14:12
TOTAL TiME: 44:28 MIN
TOTAL SIZE: 88.78 MB
RELEASE NOTES
Much like I've narrowed down the nexus of
superior thrash metal to largely dwell within the
realm of 1986-88, it really felt like black
metal's time had come in 1994. Granted, since
that time, there has never been a shortage of the
stuff, and quite a lot of it supreme, but as for
the second wave, 1994 was the spot. Many of my
favorite albums of the genre arrived this year,
and yes, most of them were Norwegian. Emperor
cornered the market on symphonic black early with
their brilliant In the Nightside Eclipse.
Darkthrone put out the one-track minded,
anomalously awesome Transilvanian Hunger.
Enslaved and Satyricon each released a pair of
cult faves. Mayhem finally arrived in full-length
form. Bands like Gorgoroth, Ancient, Hades,
Forgotten Woods and Gehenna were also making
their debuts, and the scene was expanding in
bounds of impressive expression.
Then, of course, there was Hvis Lyset Tar Oss
('If the Light Takes Us'), Burzum's third album,
which served as an antithesis to everything I
just listed. While many Norse bands were off
exploring the heights of savagery and complexity,
Varg Vikernes was concentrating inward, to an
even more minimal approach than he had taken on
the past works. This is not a short album,
necessarily, being around 45 minutes in length,
but it focuses in on but four lengthy tracks, two
of which eclipse the 14 minute mark, and yet,
they never quite succumb to the dull pallor such
ambition usually wrests from the author. Gone are
the shorter, curving compositions found on Det
Som Engang Var. Each individual in this quartet
is drawn out to painstaking lengths, fully
saturating the witness to worlds of obscurity and
antiquity. In today's climate, this is not such
an uncommon practice. Unless you're living out in
the sticks, you probably couldn't stroll four
blocks without encountering a handful of
bedroom/desktop black or post-black metal artists
who drone their swollen dreams on for far too
long, offering next to nothing in the interior.
Back in 1994, it was still pretty unusual to run
across such a work. It would have been an act of
commercial suicide outside of genres like this
one, which were already suicide to begin with.
But Varg Vikernes has never been one to dwell on
such folly, and so Hvis Lyset Tar Oss stood as
his least accessible, but most impressive display
of carnage to its day. Thematically, the riffs
here are a blend of what we experienced on Burzum
and Det Som Engang Var. They're not as dark or
groove-thick as several of the tracks on the
sophomore, but they bring back some of the
piercing cold environment of Burzum. During
several segments of this album, I felt like I was
actually experienced a spiritual successor to
Bathory's Blood Fire Death. Not in the savage
semblance of its Viking motif, but just the way
the guitars are channeled through a raw,
repetitive glory that feels like a people, a
nation, or a glacier moving slowly towards some
conquest that was once unattainable. A forward
motion, if you will, that never ceases through
the metallic components of this CD, a wave that
escalates until finally breaking at about 30

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minutes into the track list.
It begins with a soothing calm. Scintillating
keyboard lines with a flute-like tone are
measured off against ringing, emotionally charged
chords. This is "Det Som En Gang Var". The fact
that did not appear on the album of the same name
creates a startling continuity. Around 3:00, you
hear the war drums erupt and a Bathory like
procession of vision, not unlike "A Fine Day To
Die", but steadier and longer. There is little
else to occur here for minutes, just a repeating
of the drum fills, the sauntering in and out of
the synthesizer, and at last, 5 minutes deep, the
tortured tones of Vikernes' vocals arrive like a
strangulated hag. Rinse, repeat until about 8
minutes where an arching guitar melody arrives to
mimic the keyboard, with a deviating tail that
feels like a blood caked knife being dragged
across the solid ice of a forgotten pond in which
someone drowned, their preserved corpse staring
through the glass miasma at the returned
murderer. In its waking moments, the rhythm and
ambiance shifts to an even slower pace, and then
in closure a final variation on the central
guitar riff arrives to carry it out to oblivion.
"Hvis Lyset Tar Oss" itself follows, increasing
the pace of the album to a blast, perhaps the
most intense and level blast Burzum had yet
managed, the drums kept very low in the mix so
the minimal variation in the guitar can create a
fuzzed out clarity alongside another of the
beautiful but effortless synth lines. The vocals
here sound even more forceful than the first
track, as if the strangling victim had freed
itself, to mock and chastise a gathering of
onlookers, to curse them for their passive
fascination for its own suffering. Slight shifts
are carved into this mountain of atrocity beyond
the 2 minute mark, minimal but effective guitar
lines that maintain the hypnosis Vikernes is
striving for, and then around 6 minutes there is
a final, desperate rush, before the torch is
passed over to "Inn I Slottet Fra Droemmen (Into
the Castle from the Dream)" and its deceptively
jarring monotony. Through this track, Varg weaves
Voivod-like dissonance and a gleaming, methodic
force until a graceful breakdown half-way in,
guitars taking all the weight here until the
drums return around 5:30 and slowly gather speed
until the lamenting melody of its final act.
Lastly, there is "Tomhet (Emptiness)", which was
wisely placed so as not to erupt the rest of the
ritual. With good reason: this is not a metal
song. No, this is more akin to something
Tangerine Dream would have written during their
peak of 80s soundtracks and studio albums, a
highly saturated, dreaming atmosphere conjured
through three primary synth lines. One of them is
mere resonance, surviving for several minutes,
while the second repeats a vague, spacelike
pattern, and the third crowns it all with
benevolent, but cold bliss. Before the 7 minute
period, these fade into a more somber tone, as if
submerged in an arctic sea, the plump and plucky
little melodies of the depths queued by the
diver's exposure to the wildlife found therein,
calm and strewn towards its destiny of predator
and prey. Later, around 10 minutes, flute-like
sounds and tinny, recessed percussion arrive that
seem to leech the listener from that depth and
create a glade-like incandescence, as if the
diver had drowned and was seeing some arboreal
Elysium. It's quite strange, but it's also my
favorite track on this album...
As usual, with any Burzum release, you simply
cannot expect to experience the same emotions
you've found on previous releases. For all its
subtle similarities, there are just as many if
not more differences found throughout Hvis Lyset
Tar Oss. Here, Vikernes has mastered the ambient
half of his equation for the first time in
memory. "Tomhet" is the most rapturous voyage he
had yet penned outside his metal material, but
its stunningly simple. Just about anyone with an
inkling of how to hit a synthesizer chord and
press a 'record' button could have performed
this. And that's the beauty. The return to earth.
To elements. The rustic, puerile charm. It's an
enormous contrast to the charge of the first
three tracks, and yet ironically the perfect
post-script, as if all rising tension and glory
led to its necessary calms.
Because of moments like this, Burzum is very
often equated with being one of the few 'artists'
within the metal sphere. I'm going to tell you
that this is utter bullshit. Projected elitism.
Bleary eyed snobby smearing. Virtual reality. If
someone tells you this, hit them with a stick.
Then hit them a second time, for me. Almost all
metal through the ages, like other forms of the
medium, have been art, just of varying strengths,
purpose and size, of which we can argue until
we're blue in the face. But that Vikernes is more
'artsy' than some would be hard to dispute. He
conjures minimal aesthetics with a clear purpose.
He's a masterful composer with few tools. A
divisive engineer of aural frustrations. Hvis
Lyset Tar Oss is with ease one of his most potent
statements, surpassed marginally by its successor
in my reckoning, and only by a mere elbow's
breadth. Armed with lyrics of loss and wrath,
this album forms a unique bridge to the more
historically, folk driven themes Vikernes would
use on further efforts. It's not entirely
flawless. There are a few minutes in the first
two tracks that often cause some drift (not in
the right direction), but on the whole this
remains a desperate, delicate, intricate and
destructive pleasure to experience.
QUOTES
You give me 5 Bloods, 5 Crips 4 Mexicans and 3
rednecks, this shit would have been over. Niggas
and Mexicans, we go over there and steal all the
tracks off their tanks, them tanks will be on
bricks. We come back home like "Who want some
tank tracks?". And y'all know rednecks love
hunting , a redneck you give that nigga rifle
with a scope he can hit a fly off a deer's ear
from 500 yards. They don't fuck around and they
all have a hunting dog named Petey, you know them
pointer motherfuckers. You drop them in
Afghanistan Petey gonna point at the right cave
[Mimicking Petey] "Mofucker in there,
motherfucker in there!! I smell him!!".
-- Eddie Griffin
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