Norway's Dimmu Borgir are back now on Nuclear Blast with a new (ish) entitled Enthrone Darkness Triumphant. This CD is a departure from their previous work in that it concentrates on making more "brutal" sounding melodic black metal rather than its slow and melancholic "For All Tid" and "Stormblast." ETD is very well produced and solid sounding that is mainly synth driven and very melodic. Granted that the album is well executed and produced it is rather boring musically. At first I liked it, they do have a few good songs on it, but it is too polished, to artificial. There is no real emotion or heart put into this which makes it seem like they are just following trends and not really in it for the music. They already seem to have professional make-up artists doing their corpse paint and they have some nice new shiny spikes and axes they might have picked up at black metal accessories R us maybe. What is next? Will the become total Cradle of Filth clones and resort to the vampire look? Who knows, but it is apparent they are indeed selling out. You might think that this talk about image has nothing to do with the music, but their music has changed and become rather generic and boring. All in all it was good when I listened to it the first two times and after that it is very boring. If you want to support the whoring of black metal and get some generic, melodic, cookie cutter "black metal" then this is for you. On the other hand leave it alone.

© 1998 malefic