My demon burger’s overcooked. – 48%
LycanthropeMoon, December 10th, 2019
Ah, good ol’ Dimmu Borgir, symphonic black metal’s biggest superstars. Loved by some, hated by others. Personally, I’m actually quite fond of everything up to and including “In Sorte Diaboli” when it comes to these rather polarizing Norwegians. Maybe it’s nostalgia goggles since these guys, alongside the even more polarizing Cradle of Filth of course, helped ease me into the more extreme side of the heavy metal spectrum. That could most certainly be it. In any case, where as the previous albums are (for me at least) pretty damn entertaining, this one’s…well, it’s a hot fucking mess.
It could have something to do with the fact that ICS Vortex and Mustis suddenly left the band around 2009, with Mustis saying he wasn’t properly credited for a lot of the songwriting he did and Vortex backing him up. The rest of the band claimed they already had half of this album written by the time they decided to leave without any of their input, and basically accused Vortex and Mustis of being lying lazy greedy scumbags. It’s hard to pick a side here since this is mostly hearsay from both sides, but honestly, the lack of consistency on this particular album makes me think that those two at the very least had a bigger impact on the band’s musical direction than Shagrath, Silenoz and Galder’s bald Uncle Fester-lookin’ ass want to admit.
The album starts off with a largely instrumental orchestral opener, “Xibir”. It’s honestly not bad, it’s got a nice and epic vibe that wouldn’t be too terribly out of place on 2003’s gloriously fun over-the-top “Death Cult Armageddon”. Things get started off on a pretty positive note, at the very least. After that, “Born Treacherous” kicks in, and the album’s flaws immediately become apparent. The song switches from mid-paced symphonic metal grooves to fast blasting blackened sections without any real flow at all. This essentially sounds like two different songs haphazardly thrown together, and lead single “Gateways” (which comes up next) isn’t really any better. The first minute or so of the track is honestly pretty nice – the choirs sound great, the guitars are heavy, the orchestra is huge and epic. Then, more whiplash as the tempo abruptly changes without any real flow or build up again. There’s also some female vocals on this one, which aren’t too bad necessarily, but I’d have preferred Vortex here in all honesty. When you really think about it though, this is probably the perfect lead single for the album – it lets you know how haphazardly thrown together half of this thing is. Then there’s the song they named after themselves, and while it’s not nearly as disjointed as others on this album, it’s utterly obnoxious to listen to. It’s got almost a blackened power metal vibe to it, and sounds more fitting for a Nightwish album. However, NW’s Tuomas Holopainen is far better at crafting a good pop hook than these guys, so I’d rather just go listen to anything off “Century Child” than this.
Not every song on here is a hot mess, though. “Ritualist” is a lot of fun and switches between its speeds and tempos in a far more fluid way than pretty much every other song on this album. There’s also some pretty nice singing from Snowy Shaw of Therion fame. He was also in Dimmu for a total of one day before he left, by the way, so that’s uh…interesting, to say the least. There’s also “A Jewel Traced Through Coal”, which while imperfect, certainly contains the best usage of symphonic elements on this album – the bridge is absolutely monumental, and a bit Wagnerian in a way. Honestly, a lot of the orchestration on this album is pretty good, it just happens to be stuck in a lot of irritatingly disjointed songs.
Honestly, these songs probably just needed more time to gestate. There are certainly some damn good ideas scattered throughout this thing, but most of them aren’t really put together in a coherent way. There were a couple songs that had this issue on the previous album too (see: “The Sacrilegious Scorn”), but it wasn’t nearly as big of a problem as it is on here. Perhaps given more time and effort in the writing department (despite the 3 year wait between this and “In Sorte Diaboli”), this would have been a better album. As of now, while it’s far from the worst thing I’ve ever heard, it’s at least the worst thing these guys have cooked up. Pass.
rafazardly 