The Umskiptar album is also a return-to-the-roots album for me, with a strong focus on atmosphere and wholeness rather than anything else. The vocals on this one however are more important than on any other album, with a total of 66 stanzas, some of them even repeated a few times, making up the lyrics of the album. The vocals are very important for the special atmosphere and are more important than on any other Burzum album, and more varied too and as honest as it gets. The concept of the album is Umskiptar (English = Metamorphoses), a deeply rooted European (i.e. Pagan) Stoic concept of changes. This concept was chosen in a world heading for a new Ice Age, and can therefore also be seen as critique of all the popular political movements of our age of lies.
– VARG VIKERNES

The concept and lyrics on Umskiptar are taken from Voluspa (The Seeress’s Prophecy), the first poem of the Poetic Edda – a collection of Norse poetry preserved in the 13th