Hvis lyset tar oss

Varg Vikernes recorded the first four Burzum albums at the Grieg Hall in Bergen between January 1992 and March 1993. He issued them months, sometimes years, apart. This one was taped in September 1992 and released in April 1994. He played and sang everything on it — guitar, bass, drums, keyboards and voice — with Pytten involved in the production. The title is Norwegian for "if the light takes us", and Vikernes has described the record as a single conceived piece: what once was, before the light took us and we rode into the castle of the dream. Three long mid-tempo songs run in sequence and then a fourteen-minute keyboard piece closes it. The cover uses Fattigmannen ("The Pauper"), drawn by the Norwegian artist Theodor Kittelsen in 1894 and 1895. Promotional copies sent out to fanzines carried "Et hvitt lys over skogen" in place of the closing "Tomhet"; that piece was later issued on the 1998 compilation Presumed Guilty. The running order here is the original's as printed.