Origin : Norway
Genre : Black Metal / Ambient
Release : 2013
Album Info / Review
**Burzum – Sol Austan, Mani Vestan**
A bold, almost audacious statement from a project whose earlier work was known for its stark, raw minimalism. Burzum’s latest double‑disc offering, *Sol Austan, Mani Vestan*, is a sprawling, ruminative journey that gestures toward both the extremes of black metal’s origins and a more expansive, almost post‑industrial atmosphere. The material feels like a living, breathing canvas: part echoes of broken-gear campfires, part dystopian city noir.
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### Sound & Production
From the opening sweep of tremolo‑driven guitars on Disc 1, the album blows any notions of “lo‑fi” into a new quadrant. Generously layered atmosphere is evident even in the simplest passages—layered, reverb‑heavy synth textures that creep in behind thin, jagged riffs. The track “Silhouette of Ash” opens with a jagged slide that never quite resolves, the guitar sustained through a monstrous, minute phase shift that gives it a who‑ling worm‑deep quality. The drums bounce with a Miller‑ton–level presence rather than the barebones blast‑cymbals of old‑school Novembers‑out‑of‑Time, a choice that gives the momentum considerable depth.
Disc 2 takes a more cinematic turn—the “Vernal Voice” track turns into an almost meditation‑like soundscape, with less distortion, more wobbly, granular processed samples. The whole double‑album sits on a well‑balanced sonic range: the EP‑style stabs sit comfortably between the raw, low‑end metallic growls at the bottom and high‑frequency, wireless effects at the top. The mastering is crisp, not the “tapped‑up” gloss prized in mainstream metal, but the mix is fairly transparent; layers can be peeled back and heard in isolation in a few isolated turn‑around cuts.
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### Atmosphere
The title itself carries an almost geographical flavor: “Sol Austan” (Sun in the east) and “Mani Vestan” (Moon in the west). The contrast between the two discs is clear. Disc 1 is sun‑lit in a cold, shimmering sense—high, metallic peaks with an underlying sense of winter wind. Disc 2, the “manic” moonside, is darker, bruised by a heavy fog of dissonance and almost an ambient string of static. The overall atmosphere is expansive: a sense that the listener is in a world that is both distant and intimately auroral.
The production offers no easy theatrical cues; instead, it creates an almost siegel‑like ambience that beckons the mind to drift and then take a faster, harsher beat. Mainh artifact layers, the low‑mid pulsation in “Pale Haze,” and the crackle of lo-fi ambient snippets have all been placed to simulate what one might hear in a rain‑soaked bleak Norwegian fjord under a full moon.
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### Riffs
Burzum’s trademark tremolo isn’t just a gimmick here but a signature of melodic intent. The riffs are complex enough to require attentive listening but aren’t “hard‑to‑play” in the sense of the most virtuosic black‑metal.
– *Space Deceiver* opens with a sweeping, de‑tune melody that sub‑divides into fifteen subtle variations. It feels as if the guitar itself is breathing in pitch shifts that mirror the frills of a torch‑lit forest.
– *Dust‑Coral* turns into a machine‑raiding blasphemical riff that has a simple, but crushing nailing of the low‑guitar. The sound is more captured than raw. The slew through each modulating interval suggests a mind‑awake realm.
– A standout is *Nightgone,* where the string mutates into a groggy, almost near‑silence between each burst. The interplay between the 808‑type bass or a low‑end no “MDA” synth has a pleasant, throbbing gravitational pull.
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### Vocals
Varg’s voice appears only in a handful of tracks. Even rarer are the unfiltered “song normals.” The screams are enormous, less focused than other leading bands, but they conjure a clearing that bears rattling tunes. The minimalism is a clarifying act—detectably singular but not sprawling. The effect is dreamy, like hearing a distant choir against a storm.
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### Overall Impression
*Sol Austan, Mani Vestan* is not a simple re‑hash of a 90s Yggdrasil Loyalist. It’s an evangelical soundscape that still foregrounds the lyrical sacrifice—to call it “formal experimentation” might be an understatement. The ambient layering, the surreal hook points, and the rough edges of multiple tracks coalesce into an album that outlines the present Frost‑Reverence seen in modern extreme metal, yet it stands in contrast to the more polished points of son.
It feels mostly unified in its musings and musical intent. While the album may seem uneven (especially for someone who favors the original two‑set of Tremor‑running grooves), it has enough riveting anathema and the mass of its textures to convince any seasoned black‑metal fan that there is still wealth to unearth in the older compositions. In between the “Sun” side’s Eastern heat and the “Moon” side’s Western ache, the album’s dim volumes are that of a small collectable. The heart is fast enough to keep the ear energized, a modern take that, ironically, keeps the memory of the very old surf of a most Serbian principal velocity alive.
