Dunkelheit

First, let me start off by saying that I love the song Dunkelheit (or Burzum, depending on where you're from). It is very repetitive, but also strangely hypnotic. It's steady drum beat, hypnotizing keyboards, and rasped and clean vocals steadily layered onto each other is mesmerising, and truly an epic work (and I don't use the term loosely).

However, the video is total garbage. Seemingly random shots of forests in Norway mixed with runes and wolves. I could do that. I would do it for you right now, but this is text only, so I can't. :(
The video is also tremendously boring. All it is is just simple cross fades and blinding shots of sunshine in forests. The video also lacks direction. I know that's what Varg stands against, but the video is seemingly random images.

Maybe I'm not getting it, maybe it's supposed to be some sort of avant-garde masterpiece that I'm not getting. That maybe so, but to me at least, the video is best looking away from the screen.

What else could be expected of Burzum? Though Filosofem was a bit more mainstream than previous albums (and less in some ways, 25 min track of nothing i'm looking at you there...), Burzum in a 'Metallica- One' sort of way finally released a visual accompaniment for Dunkelheit. It is the only kind of video this music can or should have.

Stan Brakhage and Jen Reeves flooded the avant garde film world with this sort of thing, occult animation (In this case dealing with Runes, which are to Burzum as Iconic as Eddie to Iron Maiden) mixed with imagery so appropriate in it's dismal ugliness and gloomy tone that it's hard for me to think of the music without it. Nordic landscapes, nordic fauna, and nordic esoteric conceptual imagery. All shown in low fidelity grainy scratchy film to video that echoes Burzum's production quality, in desaturated color and sawtooth motion blur that also fit the sound of the 2nd wave of black metal. Even the box for the video is made of cheap pulp and covered by a sloppy drawn iconic rune.

The video has it's detractors but I find it to be the absolute Ideal. I heard it was dull. No more so than the deathly drone of the song. I heard it lacked live footage. When did Burzum ever play live? This work exists out of the regular continuity of metal videos just as Varg existed out of the regular video realm even of the already irregular genre. Any experimental film student will tell you that this video is on par with the finest moments of underground beyond underground experimental cinema. Watch it on a spent tape in a dark room (Or on YouTube, such is the modern expectation) and it will pull you deep into the mindset that Burzum is all about.

"Dunkelheit" is one of Burzum's best. It isn't an excellent track, but it's manages to keep on interest though it's huge minimalism and repetition. It fades in immediately with a buzzing sound of piercing guitar which sounds like a dirty saw and then the drums comes in slowly, being hided slowly and then takes a real beat and flows with the guitar along a mid paced riffing and muffled keyboards which increases an ambient feeling within. Varg has extremely distorted and harsh vox here and fitting perfectly with the guitar. There are only three riffs (or so) within the song, but they have an interesting approach and doesn't gets dull due to small changes within the song. For instance, it's played along distorted vocals in one section, and clean vocals in other section. It's played only with drums, but suddenly the keyboards joins and adds a different variation...you got it. Simple roots but interesting building.

Now for the video: boring, simply boring. It looks like someone took a cheap camera, travelled in Norway's forests and took some random shots of the view there. What the hell it has to do with the song? I always asked myself but never understood. In the first two minutes you think that maybe it has a chance to grow for something interesting, but man, this is simply boring to watch this video for more than a minute.

Just don't search for it, it has a decent song but boring ass video which just doesn't fits the song, that's all.

I'ven't seen Hecate Enthroned anything, but i did see the Immortal video and got a jolly good laugh....

...wait a sec. Black metal made me laugh? Something's amiss. (The little bit of Immortal I've heard I find quite silly even without the ridiculous romping in the woods)

Then I saw this thing. Dunkelheit (whose actual name is Burzum, but whose German translation is the much more popular name) is one of the candidates for Burzum's theme song in general. To me, it represents the contemplation of darkness (duh) and the "grym" (relatively) side of Burzum. It's good on its own, and especially well complements the song right after it on Filosofem (Jesus Tod).

The video has a 15-second silent intro with a wolf howling at the camera, during which "Burzum" and then "Dunkelheit" appear in rune-like letters. Then the song kicks off. It basically features fuzzy shots of Norwegian (i presume) forests and coasts, during the day or evening, and in the summer. It goes through some color filter changes, and the main visual attraction (besides the effectively shot forests) is the drawing of Old Norse runes on stone, parchment, whatever. We never see any people, and the only thing besides the runes, the sky, the sea, and the forests is the wolf at the beginning. Music videos are supposed to draw the viewer/listener deeper into the song, and I've seen music videos that I liked, only to discover that the video alone and the song alone were crappy. This one has a decent video and a good song that combine to make a really good music video. I got more into the song while watching it.

But it seems slightly misplaced, in that Dunkelheit (the song) to me seems dark and grym, while this one represents the "det som en gang var" esthetic of Burzum, referring not to that album, but to what that phrase literally means - a longing for that which once was, in this case pagan Norway before the white plague (i.e the invasion of xianity), with untouched forests and Old Norse runes. The wolf in the beginning might very well be howling for a return to such a past.

So basically I see that there are two different sides of Burzum that somehow got placed together in a music video which is quite good the way it is, and I enjoy watching it, but would be far better if it stuck to one train of thought.

I wonder if anyone's ever done videos for other Burzum songs? I'd really like to see the following - Hvis Lyset Tar Oss, Jesus Tod, maybe Det Som En Gang Var, and most of all Gebrechlichkeit II (maybe I).

The song is as good as always, but there really was no point in this video. Seven and a half minute cannot be filled with just two ideas (not counting the silent wolf in the beginning). We got foggy pictures all the way, clearly shot without any kind of tripod. Unsteady tree footage and some water with wave patterns or runes being drawn on stone, wood, and waters and in the middle of the air – that’s what we get. Sure, Varg brings us pictures all around from the nature, but we really only get three or four shooting locations that have been messed with later on. Everything gets changed colours, mainly in yellow, but also in green, blue and so on. The animations don’t really fit the musical rhythms either.

From every video technical standpoint this is some of the worst low-budget stuff ever released. The fans of this video claim it to be a hypnotic experience of nature. Right – minimalism in his music and minimalism in his videos. Not a bad thing in itself but combined with a cameraman not knowing how to hold his gear, repetition of the same landscape – just with a new colour filter – what? They say black metal is filled with stupid videos and that Dunkelheit is the exception. It might not be stupid as it has some real good ideas – some more wouldn’t have made it worse though. And some variation in the shooting locations would’ve been real good.