To Hell & Back Again: Part IV: My Burzum Story

by Varg Vikernes

🎶 Learn about how Burzum came to be.
🎸Discover the process, techniques, influences, and insight behind the making and recording of each album.
🖤Gain a deeper understanding of early black metal as Varg shares anecdotes and untold stories from the Norwegian black metal scene.
🔥Hear the unique story about Burzum directly from Varg Vikernes.

Genres: Biography

104 pages, Paperback

Published April 4, 2024

About the author

Varg Vikernes is a Norwegian musician. In 1991 Vikernes conceived the one-man music project Burzum, which quickly became popular within the early Norwegian black metal scene. In Metal: A Headbanger's Journey, director Sam Dunn described Vikernes as "the most notorious metal musician of all time".

"After creating in the course of four early albums an impressive body of art that essentially ended black metal as it was by raising the bar beyond what others could easily participate in, Vikernes was imprisoned for sixteen years for his alleged role in church arson and murder. During the time he was in prison, he put out two more impressive keyboard-based albums and several books’ worth of writings before falling silent around the turn of the millennium." (source: www.deathmetal.org)

Since then and after his release in 2009, he has authored several writings on Nordic/Germanic neopaganism and European nationalism from a primitivist and naturalist stance focused on cultural values in the community and family.

Reviews

[Cthulhu · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting and insightful journey into the creation and development of Burzum. This book chronicles the different time periods in which the tracks and albums were written and recorded, as well as some of what influenced the overall sound and feel. A must read for Burzum fans!

[Ryan Farrow · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book contains information of limited interest for those who are looking for details regarding Varg’s musical projects. Most of what we learn are the opinions, feelings, and thoughts of Varg himself during various recording periods, you get an insight into what was driving his musical/artistic decisions to some degree, and there are a few interesting tidbits. For the most part, though, my overall impression is just that Varg is a very immature guy whose adolescent cynicism only changed outward expression, and never really evolved. He’s certainly a very interesting character, and his creative output is undeniable, but there is no personal growth to speak of, and even amid some tacit criticisms of his earlier follies, there are mirrored repeats in his current attitude that follow almost immediately. I was more interested in learning some of the mechanical aspects of Varg’s writing and recording process, and there is some of that here, as well as some conceptual information which is cool to learn about for a fan of Burzum. Other than that, it’s more of the same 1-dimensional analyses of cultural woes and the same nihilistic primitivism served as a solution, peppered throughout the musically-relevant sections. I read this in one sitting over a couple hours, much like Pt. 1, so it’s a low investment for some light entertainment, but there’s very little of real interest here.

[Jörgen Svensson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't be the only one who finds it extremely ironic that the author proudly boasts that he (and I paraphrase) "would not lift a finger to help the USA" but consistently uses US$ and mph throughout the book instead of NOK/€ and km/h. Why would you, as a European, even bother to do that ... unless your target audience is in fact the people you claim to hate?

[Steve M · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one is far out dude! So this book is about the mindset that Varg was in making his Burzum albums, he seems to always find a way to bring it back to "politics" "sigh" so it's somewhat hard to read between the lines. It's also hard to follow as he jumps through the years, as always the crimeless plug of MyFarog close to the end. Overall it's a good book not the easiest of reads.