A few weeks ago, I visited the local metal store. It's a small obscure shop selling only heavy metal CDs, cash only, no cards accepted. I asked the long-haired and pale guy behind the counter if he had any cool stuff to recommend. He handed me an album by Australian grindcore-death-metal band The Berzerker. I bought the CD, and also grabbed the new album Abrahadabra by Dimmu Borgir.
Dimmu Borgir isn't my favorite band; I like the old-school black metal better. I wasn't very impressed by the previous Dimmu Borgir album and didn't have big expectations this time. Also, they recently fired half the band members, and replaced them by session musicians on base, drums and keyboard.
The new album was a positive surprise, nice melodic black-metal-inspired symphonic metal. Finally, they've got budgets big enough to hire a full symphony orchestra, and a big choir. In the song named Dimmu Borgir, the orchestra, choir and band flows nicely together. It has almost a radio-hit potential (hard-core black-metal fans don't like that).
On the song Getaways, which is the official video (a crazy mix of milk, blood and pigeons), they also use some female vocal. This works quite well, for variation, in particular the last 1/3 of the song (the "be the broken or the breaker" part). But they're not the first black metal band to do this; Satyricon had some female vocal on the Volcano album.
It's gonna be very interesting to see how they will perform the new songs live. Hopefully I get the chance to see them in concert next year. It's a really good live band >:)
Its a nice surprise to have moderate expectations exceeded. I remember a local music store years ago. The owner would recommend bands few had heard of but really rocked and had great tunes. Alas, he went the way of most record stores.
ReplyDeleteAs Stephen says, it's always great to have your expectations exceeded. I must confess even your glowing review won't get me buying this (or any other heavy metal)album...but I'm learning more about heavy metal music than I ever thought I would, so that must be a good thing, right? Right! :)
ReplyDeleteJudy
I might check it out. In Sorte Diaboli really disappointed me. I was like "really? that's it?". It was so mundane and boring. I used to love them up to Puritanical (which I really liked). Then they started with that whole "let's explore the music" thingie and started to put trumpet here and there.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that they fired members give me hope. Thanks for the suggestion.
Stephen. Always nice when expectations are exceeded. And it's good to have these small specialized CD stores that can advice you. I have discovered many good bands that way too >:)
ReplyDeleteJudy: Right! There is this saying (in my language at least) that knowledge is easy to carry. It never harms to learn something new, even about such unimportant things as heavy metal. Maybe I'll write a series about the various sub-genres of heavy metal. Let's make a deal; you write a series about the basics of South African history, and I write one about metal >:)
Ben: Yes, In Sorte Diaboli was disappointing (but I sold quite a lot). I think the first three Dimmu Borgir albums are still the best. Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia is very good too. It remains to see how Abrahadabra will be judged by time. They have been very good at playing live, and they always play songs from the good old albums >:)
Indeed. Puritanial and Enthrone remain my two favorite albums. They have their definite style without versing into the Metallica "We-Explore-With-Music" crap.
ReplyDeleteBen: This might be an album for you: Aspera Hiems Symfonia
ReplyDeleteHeard about Arcturus, never game them a listen. Will do as soon as I get home. Thanks!!!
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