Thulean Archives

So what kind of vocal technique did I use for the Burzum albums? Let's find out! (?) when I started out Burzum in August, maybe September, I'm not sure, 1991, I had a guitar and no bass player, no drummer, no vocalist.^[1] The bass player part was easily solved by purchasing a bass guitar, and voila, I was a bass player. The drummer part was fairly easily solved by asking Padden from Old Funeral if I could use his drum kit a little bit to practice. And I did. In the Old Funeral rehearsal place in Os, outside of Bergen. Not "ah-s", but "oo-s". I'm not the Wizard of Oz, I'm the Sorcerer of Os. And frankly, I got the hang of it pretty quickly. That is, I learned how to play drums sufficiently to record an album. Was never very good drummer. The vocalist problem though, remained. But one day, for some reason, I had brought my guitar to my mother's place,^[2] and I was standing there looking at the view, and I thought, and I was completely alone, and I thought, why not try to sing yourself Vrag? Although my name wasn't "Vrag" at the time, or Varg. So I turned on the, um, guitar amplifier, played some guitars, you know, the tracks that I had made, and I tried singing. And what I did was to scream from the bottom of my heart and lungs.^[3] And I wasn't entirely happy with it. But I thought, you know, this will do. So all of a sudden, I had to solve the bass problem, the drum problem and the vocal problem. And when I went to the studio for the debut album,^[4] for "Det som engang var ", for "Hvis lyset tar oss", and for the "Aske" mini album, instead of singing, I screamed into the microphone. You know, absolutely intensely, as loudly as I could. And like I said, from the bottom of my heart and lungs. But as some people already know, you don't need to scream from the bottom of your heart and lungs to do the vocals, even in black metal.^[5] And when I recorded the Filosofem album, I changed things dramatically. Instead of screaming like a lunatic, I would hiss, so to speak, into the microphone. And also, instead of the microphone, I used the headset. I've talked about that in another video. So from then on, I stopped screaming like a lunatic and instead hissed into the microphone. Could I've used the same early Burzum technique today? Yes, I could. But did I ever like it? Well, let's find out. Honestly, no. I didn't like the vocals for the first three full length albums,^[6] really. And had I known more, I would have done it differently, would have done it the same way I've did since Filosofem. At the same time, I recognise today that these albums would have been different had I been able to sing better. And some people appreciate the way that they were done. And that's fine. Personally, I prefer the re-recordings of the old tracks.^[7] And if I could, I would have re recorded everything with new vocals. In short, the vocals on the early Burzum albums was done sort of like, instinctively. Based on the fact that I had zero education, had no idea what I was doing, and just experimented. And some people think it worked, and that's fine. And may I add that I was actually 18 years old when I recorded the debut album. And 19 when I recorded the other early albums, except Filosofem, when I was 20. I just turned 20,^[8] so I was young and inexperienced. But I did my own thing, and it kind of worked.

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1. And worst of all: Nobody to play RPGs with.
2. On the Winter Solstice, I may add.
3. As if I have a heart, right? lol!
4. But NOT the lack of RPG-players problem.
5. ... you can just turn up the volume on the mic...
6. But I used what i had.
7. Actually, the vocals are cool on DSEV and somewhat on HLTO as well.
8. ... and I wasn't balding at the time.