This could be the shortest review I’ll ever write. It could be a single sentence, which would be all that is necessary to summarize, even without exaggerated concision, the essence of Varg Vikernes aka Burzum’s Dauði Baldrs and the reasons for its immense failure. “The repetition of a single theme for the entirety of a song with slight variations in the instrumentation does not constitute successful minimalist music, no matter how pretentious the artist in question may be, or how deep an understanding he thinks he has of the likes of Philip Glass and Steve Reich.” That alone would be more than enough. A more succinct reviewer could deliver the correct qualitative judgement thus: “Absolute shite.” However, for the greater pleasure of my readers, I will take advantage of the opportunity to exercise a greater amount of rhetorical muscle, mostly for the purpose of derision. Do not expect much in the way of musical analysis, as there is nothing to analyze.

Burzum’s first album to emerge from the wonderfully permissive prison system of Norway is, first and foremost, an offense to the generosity of his penitential hosts. Allowing an arsonist and murderer the possibility of maintaining his compositional track record while behind bars is more than most governments of advanced nations would allow. Using this undeserved generosity to spew out a lazy, half-assed collection of repeated themes is just selfish. He could have at least justified the trust of his captors and produced something halfway decent.

Another reflection raised by this fetid collection of haemorrhoidal musical diarrhoea pertains to the size of Varg’s ego. Dauði Baldrs is described on Wikipedia as being “a mix of medieval music, ambient, classical and minimalism.” Which means that Varg fancies himself capable of producing medieval, ambient, classical and minimalist music. Which raises the question, “who the fuck does he think he is?” This album sounds like a 13 year old who just started playing the piano discovered garage band on his Mac and uses his “project” to attract girls in Starbucks. Móti Ragnarokum doesn’t even have a goddamm theme, for chrissakes, just a simple arpeggio, with synthetic trumpets sounding off pathetically in the background, no doubt in an attempt at sounding “epic”. The man’s ego must be larger than Sarah Palin’s.

I won’t pretend to know exactly by what criteria minimalist music is judged. I am, however, not impressionable enough to back away from criticizing something which seeks solace from well-deserved mockery behind the veil of the esoteric. This album is detestable, the manifestation of arrogant laziness that is the result of a media- and fan-fed god complex. It is the musical equivalent of the American Pie sequels, although that particular franchise is spared my vitriol, having provided me with an abundant supply of tits in my younger years. It is the recording that Steve Reich hears when he has constipation-induced nightmares.

And now that I have become bored with it, I will abandon this review for greener pastures. Belus had better be really fucking good.