Filosofem

The album was taped in March 1993 at the Grieg Hall in Bergen. It is the last recording Varg Vikernes made as Burzum before a gap of years, and its release came almost three years later. He had stabbed Euronymous to death in Oslo in August 1993, and in May 1994 was sentenced to twenty-one years for the murder and for church arson. The construction of the music is unusually experimental for the black metal of its moment: minimal material, repetition, and the hand of ambient music. The first three songs are all in E minor, every piece on it runs long, and the shortest is over seven minutes. "Jesu død", eight and a half minutes, is made almost entirely of variations on one riff, and "Rundtgåing av den transcendentale egenhetens støtte" repeats a simple melody for nearly its whole length, moving from a bass ostinato to a harmony ostinato halfway through. That piece was used on the soundtrack of the film Gummo. The opening "Dunkelheit" was the first song Vikernes wrote as Burzum, under the title "Burzum". It had been recorded in September 1992 for Hvis lyset tar oss, but he was unhappy with the sound quality and left it off; he re-recorded it six months later. A video was made for it and shown on MTV and VH1. The running order here is the original's as printed.