Burzum - Draugen - Rarities CD-DVD Review

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2006-04-09 : Your momma
I agree with what Sebastianxiety said entirely. This CD is a waste of plastic and paper. The rehearsal and demo tracks are recorded like garbage... that they were re-mastered (were they actually re-mastered?) is a joke. It sounds as if the rehearsal was recorded underwater, with a single microphone... the kind of microphone you can buy for a dollar... and then converted to an mp3 at the lowest bit-rate. As much as I love Burzum, how some fanatics can go nuts over such 'rare' tracks is beyond my understanding. I prefer professional, studio sessions - as they tend to embody the songs in their most developed and fully-shaped form.

This might have been interesting if there were exclusive tracks, or if the songs differed structurally in any perceivable way from the originals, but they are essentially the same.

And the video can be downloaded for free on the internet - likely in even better quality than the one found here.

Crap, in short.
2006-02-28 : sebastianxiety
i bought this in San Francisco, listened to it once and returned it the next day. There are 6 good tracks on this CD, unfortunately, those have all been released already on Burzum's main albums and are total filler here since anyone who is gonna buy a "rarities" collection probably already owns all the other Burzum releases.

The demos/rehearsals are of unlistenable quality, despite the press release claim that they are "superb" I like the raw quality of early Burzum, but these recordings take it to a whole other level of rawness that is too grating to bear. I knew after one listen that I wouldn't be coming back to listen again. The demos sound like they're sourced from a glitchy mp3 that was in turn sourced from a 7th generation cassette.

The press release also promised "new artwork" The album artwork is non existent--- there are no photos inside or anything beside the standard Burzum rune. Plus, the very minimal text inside the booklet has a typo!

the Dunkelheit video included on the DVD portion is good, eerie and atmospheric, but is easily available for free online and isn't worth the purchase of this disc.

I wonder if Varg really authorized this disc (there's no mention of it so far on burzum.org) Because if he's really OK with this disc being released as it is, then he's all about making money not about art or even spreading his ideology (i don't see how this could convert anyone.)

This was the most disappointing album I've purchased in years. It's not worth the money. I'd recommend ANY other Burzum album besides this one, because all the real albums have their share of amazing moments, but this one just sucks.