Burzum - Hvis Lyset Tar Oss

This is one of my favourite black metal albums ever released. Not many albums match the beauty of this masterpiece. All Burzum album's are all close to flawless, but this one is without doubt flawless.

First let's take a look at the album cover done by Theodor Severin Kittelsen (one of the best artists if you ask me). It depicts some kind of decaying old man, lying in the edge of a path with crows flocking around him. To me this is a really depressing piece of art, but very emotional and fits the album content very well. Some of Darkthrone's material should use motifs like this instead of the bad photographs with one of the band members in an odd pose; it would fit so much more. Anyway back to Burzum now. After this album Mr. Vikernes understood how well Kittelsen's paintings fit to his music and utilized a whole lot of them in his upcoming album which was a really nice move.

On this album we hear a really nice production, it is not really the over the top fuzz, but still it manages to sound quite primitive and nature inspired. I can say the production is the best this album could get, not crispy nor fuzzy, just primitive.

The thing that takes up most place in the production pile is the guitars, that's rather common in black metal I know but still it is really beautiful here. Guitars on this album are often heavily distorted, not many clean notes here, and play very simple but atmospheric riffs. Often is the riffs repeated for very long but this only adds to hypnotic feeling and also the atmosphere. The main riff on Det som engang var is really exemplifies this.

On this album the synthesizers are rather different from the previous albums by Burzum. Earlier they were mostly used in ambient interludes and intros (which was great in its own way), now they are used in all songs. You maybe believe that it will ruin the "kvlt" and turn it to something cheesy like Dimmu Borgir. Fortunately that's not the case, it is nothing symphonic to the synthesizers just a little folk music inspired. On the black metal tracks they are quite moody and sad also. On the instrumental "Tomhet" they are indeed sad; on the other hand they are somewhat aggressive. They really want to grab the listener to the realm where gloom and emptiness reigns supreme.

Now for let’s talk a little about the rest. Vocals on this album are the typical shrieks from Vikernes' throat, but he sounds even more depressed and angry. But there is one thing that differs from the past albums; they are pushed back in the mix which is great. Now you can enjoy the other instruments more when the vocals don't deafen them so much, also this makes it a lot more depressive to the nature. His whispering screams in "Det som engang Var" do apart from the aforementioned things sound like his is almost afraid. Rather cool in my opinion.

The drums doesn't need so much of a comment, they do have quite a lot prominence. Most of the time they play quite well, but from time to time they get a little sloppy. If this is because Varg's playing ability or laziness from his side I am uncertain of, but I guess the first mentioned option. To be honest the sloppy sound, is not a bad thing at all, it only increases the nature feeling I talked about above.

Regarding the bass then it is not so much to say. Very often you can hear it, but it is nothing really special about it. The bass lines follow the rhythm guitar most of the time.

To sum it up there is the finest black metal albums created, since it has all elements a good black metal album shall have. Get this album if you want to hear darkness of the north.

Mayhem - De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas

One of the most well known black metal albums that were ever created I presume. Released after the band disbanded because of the death of Euronymous and Varg Vikernes being the murderer, only Hellhammer remained. If you ask me this is one of the most overrated albums in all black metal, but it is still quite good.


The production is atypical for black metal with everything heard very properly. Most black metal band strives to have as bad production as possible, but that’s not present here. I find this fitting to the vocals as Attila is so diverse and makes a very unique performance. I haven’t heard anything not even similar to his vocals here except for his other projects perhaps.


Too bad everything else doesn’t need this kind of production, the guitars is not bad but they would be a lot better if the production was a little more primitive. They have a lot of atmosphere but still they lack the emotion. The bass is very audible, which is strange since Hellhammer has said he lowered the bass parts in the mix. If this statement is true I wonder what the original recording sounded like, but I am quite sure this is just a quote from the never ending chatterbox known as Hellhammer.


Speaking of Hellhammer his drum-set is not so triggered it would be on the later recordings with this band. But funny though is that on Live in Leipzig which was released some years earlier they are triggered as hell! The patterns he play is mainly some form of blast-beats along with some fairly interesting fills. Quite different from Fenriz which more or less played the same beat for a single song or at least a larger part of it. This is half good, but I also prefer more of a hypnotic feel.

Now for the vocals, as you all know Attila Csihar of the band Tormentor was recruited to sing vocals for this album. I am a great fan of his vocals to be honest; they are unique and really diverse. Too bad they almost sound unserious on some points which ruin much of the morbid feeling I guess the Mayhem dudes wanted to achieve. The first few lines of the opener "Funeral Fog" is a great example of this. Also the "clean chanting" in the middle of the title track sound almost like a joke, especially when the lyrics are just some gibberish. It is supposed to resemble Latin, but it is just what Euronymous thought was Latin. Some of you non close-minded maybe heard of Vangelis, he uses false Latin also, but his lyrics harmonizes with the music well, here it is just random phrases.


Attila’s performance do I even found unfitting to some of the lyrics, which is may be because that Dead wrote 80% of the lyrics for this album. Dead wrote some really unique lyrics for his time, they were serious sounding and lots of emotions put into them. When Attila performs some of the songs they lose some of the feeling Dead intended. Two good examples of this are "Freezing Moon" and "Buried by Time and Dust". The first is a very good song, but Attila doesn't really capture that sad/depressed feeling when he sings. Since the song is about suicide I think the vocalist shall sound like he really wants to do it, not schizophrenic as Attila do. On "Buried..." he mostly grunts in a quite odd way and fail to get into that aggressive feeling the rest of the instruments has. It is hard to blame him really, since I think the recording process of his vocals was done in quite a rush, along with other parts of the album as well.


If you want a Mayhem album to your collection if haven't got any before, I don’t suggest this album. Buy Wolf's Lair Abyss or Ordo Ad Chao instead, they are a lot better. This is as I said quite good album, but not worth as the first album to buy of Mayhem.

My Blog

Welcome everyone! This is my first blog and hopefully only one. In this blog I will talk about about almost everything I find interesting and if you have suggestions please tell me. =) I will talk about very differing things in this blog so be prepared!

Analysis of The Golden Helmet

Of all comics in the Disney universe there some who have affected me strongly, one of them is The Golden Helmet, drawn and written by the one and only Carl Barks. For those who havent read read it the plot goes as follows.

Our all recurring hero Donald Duck is a security guard atthe Duckburg Museum and in the opening window he stares at a large Viking ship. Curiously he enters the ship and on the lower deck he finds a pequiliar man apparently examining the ship. Donald aproaches him and tells that the ship is only to be watched from the outside.

Suprised the man turns around, excuses himself and tells he must have been wrongly informed. Pointing to the outside Donald dismisses him and shortly thereafter Donald finds an ancient parchment made of deerskin in one of the logs of the ship. The parchment looks like a map of some sorts with runes on the backside, minutes later Donald has taken it to the curator and informed him about the man on the ship.

Without their knowledge, he is listening on the other side of the door. After a brief translation the runes tells the story of Olaf Blue, a viking who discovered America long before Columbus. To prove that this new land belonged to him and his ancentors he made a helmet of gold, shortly after the king of Norway called him back. Angered Blue returned to Norway, but made a secret map to show the hiding place of the helmet in case he would return. The location seems to be somewhere along the 49th longitude in Labrador

After he finished reading, the curator understand to his fear what it would mean if the helmet would be found again: the finder would be supreme ruler of the whole American continent. At the same moment the door opens and two men enters, one of them being the one from the ship and the other carries a briefcase.

The man with the briefcase prenounces himself as Lawyer Sharky and the other as Azure Blue, a decendant of the aforementioned viking. Sharky demands that the map shall be given to Azure Blue or else the museum will be sued. Jumping out of his seat the curator shouts "Can you prove that he really is the decendant of Olaf the Blue?", with a sly smile Sharky replies "Prove he is not, if you can." Soon Blue grabs the map and the couple leaves the room in triumph, probably to got fetch the helmet.

Fortunately the curator has photographic memory and draws the map on a sheet of paper and makes another copy. Donald say they have to obtain the helmet, before Blue does and destroy it. Agreeing the curator suggest they shall go two different ways in hopes of finding it quicklier and bring one copy each with them. Back home Donald tells his nephews that he will go to Labardor, after a brief discussion what Labrador really is the nephews joins him.

After some weeks at sea they finally reaches Labrador, meanwhile the curator is trying to get to Labrador by plane but as the plane runs out of fuel he must go by foot. After a seemingly endless search for the helmet they finally found it, only to get it taken by Blue and Sharky mere minutes later. Blue claims America as his sole property and prepares to kill Donald and company.

The curator shows up just in time and saves them. Just as he is about to throw it into the ocean, Sharky tells him that he can become king of America instead of Blue and backs him up. From this point the helmet switches owner from all of the adults (whoever it is Sharky always back him up) and finally to be put in the hands of Sharky.

Here is the helmet in the possesion of Donald with Sharky to the left

At the end Huey annoyed by the arguments who the helmet belongs to throws a snowball on it so Sharky looses the grip of the helmet and it disappears into the bottom of the sea.

Now for the analysis:

First of all this is a very interesting story as always Barks manage to keep the reader interested with his humor and hidden sarcasm. His drawing technique is also very impressive, especially the scenes in Labrador and the Sea.

You really get the impression you are there with Donald and his nephews. The helmet the story revolves around is very similar to the One Ring in J.R.R Tolkein's works which was to be published some years after. What I mean is everyone who have the intention to destroy it becomes addicted to it in a way very closely related to the One Ring and want to use it for their own.

Even though it was published in 1951 Barks knew very early how powerful a dominion over America would be. Time has now come to talk about the most interesting aspect of this story: Sharky! At first I thought he was just a henchman of Azure Blue. But when he provokes the curator and Donald to use the helmet instead of destroying it and takes their party I begin to think differently. Why do he always take posseser of the helmet's party and who is he really? Question like this has very often circulated in my head and now I will do the best I can to answer them in my own way.

To me he is the true villain of the story, Blue may be cruel but is more reasonable, Sharky is maybe the true decendant of Olaf the Blue! More radically I belive he may be Satan or something like that, I mean he acts like a tempter, is very coldblooded and is very attached to the helmet.

Maybe the helmet is an unholy artifact and a portal to the other side? The finale when all adults are incapacitated and Sharky is last man standing is very chokeholding and almost scary. Fortunately Huey makes an abrupt ending to this shaking scene by stoping Sharky's malevolent intentions with a snowball.

Well I dont have so much more to say then, read this comic if you find it somewhere. I strongly reccomend it, it is one the best comics that has been written, ever!

If you look at the all parts you find it quite avant-garde in how it is composed, it doesn't really follow the standard pattern of how a story shall be unfold.

The drawings are as said before superb in the wein Barks always do them, but it is nature scenes in this comic that make it somewhat unique on that point also.

If you have found more interesting things I have not noticed I am looking forward to hear them.