Burzum - the convicted Black Metal artist that is inspiring Kanye West's new album

Kanye West’s recent apology to the Jewish community has been undermined by his fashion choices, namely his odd decision to rock up on JPEGMAFIA’s Instagram wearing a Burzum shirt.

In December, West, now known as Ye, posted an apology in Hebrew for antisemetic remarks made in 2022.

“I sincerely apologise to the Jewish community for any unintended outburst caused by my words or actions. It was not my intention to hurt or demean, and I deeply regret any pain I may have caused. I am committed to starting with myself and learning from this experience to ensure greater sensitivity and understanding in the future.” said Wes,

“Your forgiveness is important to me, and I am committed to making amends and promoting unity,” he added.

Enter Burzum, aka Varg Vikernes.

Who is Varg Vikernes and what is Burzum?

Name: Kristian ‘Varg’ Vikernes – known as Louis Catchet following 2014 arrest

Date of Birth: February 11th 1973

Varg Vikernes established himself as a leader within the Norwegian Black Metal scene of the 1990s playing with Mayhem and Old Funeral. Buoyed by a desire to climb to the top of the scene, and his own obsession with the Lord of the Rings novels and the works of JRR Tolkien, Vikernes established his musical project Burzum: named after a word taken from the black speech of Mordor that means ‘darkness’ which is also carved into the One Ring. “The ‘darkness’ of the Christians was of course my ‘light’. So all in all it was natural for me to use the name Burzum,” says Vikernes when explaining the origin of the project’s name.

Vikernes is most known for his crimes though – including two major arrests, and potentially a spree of infamous church burnings, although Vikernes only ever confessed to the stealing and storage of explosive material used in the arson of three churches.

His first arrest was for the murder of Mayhem founder Euronymous in 1993. Vikernes was also jailed for 21 years – of which he served 15. The second came in 2014 when Vikernes was found guilty by a French court of inciting racial hatred against Jews and Muslims on his blog in 2014. Rambling and detailed confessions that Vikernes doesn’t want to be reproduced can be found on his Burzum website.

After his release, Vikernes – who rejects his ‘nazi’ label – took to social media to share and establish his views, starting his YouTube channel ‘Thulêan Perspective’, and continuing on Twitter/X following the shutdown of the YouTube channel after it was deemed to have broken platform restrictions following a review in policy.

He can still be found on X, however, where he is promoting his book – ‘To Hell & Back Again: My Black Metal Story’, and his tabletop role-playing game MYFAROG.

What has Vikernes said about Kanye West?

With an active social media presence, it wasn’t long before Vikernes was notified about Ye wearing Burzum merch – but he played the ‘incident’ down very quickly, saying he didn’t have much to offer about West wearing the shirt.

However, Vikernes didn’t turn on West for wearing Burzum gear, saying he wasn’t “ripping him off” and that it is “fine to be inspired by other artists’. He also commended West on his courage for wearing the shirt, and questioned where the ‘white artists’ wearing Burzum shirts were.

Interestingly, JPEGMAFIA called out Burzum and Varg on ‘ALL CAPS NO SPACES’ in 2014 where he said “Heard you like Burzum. B*tch, not me! … I heard you f*cking metalheads looking for some beats. I wish Varg would come to B’more, we gon’ see.”

Vikernes then hinted on his X page that he was too white to pass US border security.

Has Burzum inspired West’s new album?

West is set to release his latest album Vultures in February and released a snippet of what fans can expect on his Instagram on January 23rd. Artwork for the record has also been released which uses the same font that Burzum does and also appears to pay tribute to the cover of Vikernes’s 1992 Paysage de tombes, which West has sampled music from in the past.

Vultures will be West’s first album since the 2022 antisemitism controversy and he has said that he plans to release a 40-minute apology to Jewish people about his actions. However, associating his new record with a individual with so many controversies and links to Neo-Nazism is an odd way to try and appease any ill feelings the Jewish community, or anyone with a sense of dignity might have about them.

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