BURZUM Daudi Baldrs (1997) Digipak CD

Recorded entirely on a synthesizer in a Norwegian prison cell, Daudi Baldrs is the album that divided a fanbase and fascinated everyone else. Varg Vikernes, stripped of guitars and drums by circumstance, leaned into Norse mythology and ambient drone, producing something that sounds less like black metal and more like a funeral rite held in a cave beneath a frozen lake.

Released in 1997 on Misanthropy Records, this is the point where Burzum stopped being a band and became something harder to categorise. The ambient experiments that surfaced on Hvis Lyset Tar Oss and Filosofem here take centre stage entirely, seven tracks of hypnotic keyboard dirges named after figures from the Prose Edda. It is bleak, strange, and completely committed to its own logic. Love it or find it impenetrable, it belongs in the collection of anyone serious about the darker corners of Scandinavian black metal history.

CD digipak. Full length album. Released 1997. Country of origin: Norway. Genre: black metal, ambient black metal.

Fans of: Mayhem, Immortal, Dark Funeral, Blasphemy.