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COUNT ME OUT. “You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style,” goes a famous line from Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. But like a lot of famous lines from famous novels, it’s pretty much bullshit. Sometimes a murderer’s prose style is pretty crappy, and in the case of Burzum (a.k.a. Varg Vikernes, a.k.a. Count Grishnackh), it can be downright dull. Belus (Byeolobog Productions) is his latest album, and his first since he was released from prison for the murder of black-metal founding father Euronymous; the release has been highly anticipated, mostly for reasons that have nothing to do with the music. Those who are more interested in Vikernes as a controversial personality probably won’t care, but those who first listened to him because of his moody, often-stunning take on lo-fi Scando black metal are only going to hear more of the same sort of directionless, uninspired ambient wandering that has characterized his most recent work. Belus starts and ends with the kind of synth noodling that has characterized Vikernes’ recent decline, and while there are flashes of the old Burzum in a few songs (and sadly, in some ultra-nationalist and borderline white-supremacist lyrics), it isn’t nearly enough to satisfy anyone who wants the music to be as dangerous as the man. It’s meandering and self-involved, and never delivers the kind of gut-punch Vikernes used to be capable of. We may not have the right to demand much from a guy who’s as famous for being an arsonist, racist, and killer as he is a musician, but at the very least, he shouldn’t be boring.