If tou are this site, reading this review I am going to assume that, 1) that you know who Dimmu Borgir is and their place in the pantheons of Black Metal, 2) that you probably have a strong opinion about them and their albums, 3) you know there has been an 8 year wait between albums for the second time in a row after 2010s Abrahadabra and 2018s Eonian, and 4) you are aware that long-time guitarist Galder has left the fray to focus on Old Man’s Child, essentially leaving Shagrath and Silenoz as a duo.
Now, Shagrath and Silenoz have dealt with major members leaving throughout their career, from Hellhammer and Nick Barker to ICS Vortex and Mustis. Now, they responded with the loss of Mustis and Vortex with the pretty by the numbers In Sorte Diaboli in 2007, but the addition of Galder seemed to stabilize the band after he found his feet on Abrahadabra and Eonian.
So how would the addition of session players in drummer Daray (ex-Vader), bassist Victor Brandt (ex-Entombed, Firespawn), keyboardist Gerlioz (ex-The Kovenant), and guitarist Damage (Chrome Division) affect the chemistry, which, based on press I’ve seen, touts Shagraz and Silinoz, doing the core writing over the last few years and ‘getting back to their creative roots’ (there are two songs with Norwegian titles, harkening back to the band’s early albums), etc, etc.
It’s a Dimmu Borgir album. Take that as you will, based on your response to #2 in the opening paragraph.
Like most, I feel the band’s discography up to Death Kult Armageddon is un-fuck-with-able, but, like most (I think?), everything after that seems to be treading water. And what we have here is an album that lines right up with the band’s last three albums; It’s a safe, sometimes really good, unmistakably Dimmu Borgir album.
First off, unlike Abrahadabra, where the band tried to overcompensate for something with a 100-piece orchestra/choir, the band has noticeably reigned in the choirs and symphonics, a fact Silenoz has publicly stated. But Gerlioz still delivers plenty, and they do add some bombast appropriately as needed; it’s just not utterly drenched like prior efforts, even with the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra helping out on three songs and a full choir used sparingly. Second, the band has returned to Fredrik Nordström, who produced two of the band’s classics in Death Kult Armageddon and Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia. It sounds fantastic.
Now, song-wise, it’s similar to recent past efforts where you have a few bangers like “Born Treacherous,” “Ritualist,” “A Jewel Traced Through Coal”, and “Gateways” from Abrahadabra. Or “Alpha Aeon Omega” and “Archaic Correspondence” from Eonian. But also, like those albums, there is quite a bit of rather dull filler.
The bangers, as they tend to, hit all the Dimmu sweet spots with theatrical grandeur and veteran Norwegian black metal composition that just works; the blistering true opener “Ascent”, the killer Abbath/ Immortal-ish stomp of “Ulvgjeld & blodsodel”, grandiose mid-paced “Repository of Divine Transmutation”, the almost pure/simple Norwegian black metal riffs of “The Exonerated” and “Recognizant”, and surprisingly melodic “Slik minnes en alkymist”. All quality Dimmu songs, but as with the last three efforts, of course, nothing is as classic/iconic as say “Mourning Palace” (still one of my top favorite songs in the genre of all time), “Kings of the Carnival Creation”, “Progenies of the Great Apocalypse”, etc, but what is, with that classic lineup?
But there are also completely forgettable, by-the-numbers tracks like “As Seen in the Unseen”, “The Qryptfarer”, “Phantom of the Nemesis”, “At the Precipice of Convergence”, “Shadows of a Thousand Perceptions”, or the wasted eight minutes for intro and outro “Trident” and “Gjǫll”. Also, the absence of an ICS Vortex, Snowy Shaw, or even an Agnete Kjølsrud means Shagrath’s mystical musings are all there is vocally.
And because the album ends with the boring “Shadows of a Thousand Perceptions” and then “Gjǫll”, the album ends with a bit of a forgetful whimper, which tends to be where I lean on the album ultimately as a whole when I take it all in. It’s just there with the last 3 albums as Dimmu albums I don’t mind, but simply don’t come back to, unlike the band’s early efforts.
