Having played bass in Thou Shalt Suffer, Vidar Våer was already a seminal figure in the burgeoning Norwegian black metal movement of the early 1990s. After they disbanded, and Ihsahn and Samoth began Emperor, Vidar continued recording in the same shared basement studio, adopting the alias “Ildjarn.” He self-released a series of demos between 1992 and 1994, after which he put out four full-length solo albums, as well as two EPs and two ambient albums with frequent collaborator, Nidhogg, and a single album with a band called Sort Vokter, featuring Nidhogg and two other members. (Ildjarn’s body of solo and collaborative work has been dissected and rearranged for various compilations through the years along with previously unreleased archive recordings resulting in a complicated discography.)

While many of his Norwegian peers sought cleaner production and incorporated greater melody, theatricality, and structural sophistication in their music, Ildjarn pursued his uniquely misanthropic vision with a sound that was raw, primitive, and unrelenting, animated by the purity of his hatred for humanity and little else. Ildjarn represents the distillation of black metal’s essence, which, at its core, has never been about a particular sound or style. Black metal is a fundamentally anti-social movement, and very few artists have expressed so viscerally their contempt for society as Ildjarn. Indeed, Ildjarn’s intense disdain for bands that altered their style according to trends, desperately seeking adulation from fans, was one of his primary reasons for abandoning the black metal scene.

Discordant, hypnotic, and repetitive, Ildjarn forces the listener to inhabit his malevolent ideology, to feel the pulsing surge of disgust with civilization. This boundless antipathy for humanity is one dimension of Ildjarn; another is reverence for the cold, dispassionate majesty of nature. This latter theme finds its most compelling expression in Ildjarn’s ambient works, the epic double CD, “Landscapes,” and the two-part “Hardangervidda” series—another collaboration with Niddhogg—that marked the culmination of his recorded output.

After riding the crest of black metal’s second wave, Ildjarnabruptly terminated his mission and ceased recording music in 1997, though he continued to answer occasional interviews and oversee the release of some of his archival recordings. He has remained silent since the release, in 2005, of the “Ildjarn is Dead” compilation, accompanying which was his infamous “final statement”—a 15,000-word, stream of consciousness manifesto steeped in nihilistic scorn. But the music he left behind speaks for itself. Ildjarn’s legacy has endured, and his hateful body of work has continued to echo in the years since his disappearance from the scene.

After the dissolution of Thou Shalt Suffer, Vidar Våer recorded and released four cassette demos between 1992 and 1994:“Unknown Truths,” “Seven Harmonies of Unknown Truths,” “Ildjarn,” and “Minnesjord.” Though powerful recordings in their own right, Våer, who adopted the simple moniker “The Unknown” on those tapes, was still sculpting his sound and identity. In 1995, he established his Norse-League Productions imprint, which he used for his first two CD releases, a compilation of the demos entitled “Det Frysende Nordariket” and his self-titled debut full-length album. Like all of his recordings, “Ildjarn” was recorded entirely on a cassette 4-track and retains a crude, low-fi quality. The drums, though often mistakenly believed to be programmed, are reduced to a snapping pulse buried beneath necrotic guitars and snarling vocals. Ildjarn’s steady dispensation of scorn continues ceaselessly across the 27 tracks on this album, most of which never cross the 3-minute mark and are often cut unexpectedly mid-song. Assessed in isolation, these songs feel unchanging, almost inhuman, but the complete matrix of sounds, riffs, and tempos on this album reveals Ildjarn’s visionary genius.

• Label: Nuclear War Now Records
• Format Type: 12"
• Genre: metal
• Genre Style: black metal