Black Metal History Month - Into the Dark Castle of Dimmu Borgir's "In Sorte Diaboli"

 

Sometimes there are albums like this one that jsut hit the perfect place in time. It almost feels silly to review something this perfect. Hellhammer's playing solidifies his place as black metal's best drummer. It is the last Dimmu Borgir album we are going to hear ICS Vortex's voice on, which hurts them on albums to come. When everything falls into place like this, your dodn't want to mess with this chemistry. But the show had to go on, and the album after this is really great, but I think they set the bar so high for themselves it is intimidating to them to go back into the studio. 

It is an aggressive album. But there are tremendous riffs that pull it all together. The production is stellar. The mix had to be rough as there is so much going on at the same time at great speeds. While I think Shagrath's performance reaches his peak level on the next album, it's clear the production is dialed in, and he covers a great deal of dyanmic vocal colorswith the limited range he has to work with, making him one of the best black metal vocalists. The lyrics are even more pronounced on this album. This is highlighted on "Sacralicious Scorn". Vortex's vocal hook is one of his strongest performances ever. The epitome of hooky black metal. 

 "The Sinister Awakening." find Hellhammer playing like a machine as the tension flows in a manner that makes the riffs more effective when they do punch. There is a harder-hitting syncopation to "the Fundamental Alienation." They are consistently packing the most dynamics and sonic layers into this five-minute format. One thing I like about digging back into older albums is the chance to rediscover songs I might have overlooked on previous listens, which is the case with the last song, which is pretty dark for a band that deals in a darker form of metal, but is a more cartoonish super villain manner to some extent no matter the amount of pentagram used. I will give this album a 10, it's almost an 11, more than likely would be in my top 40 metal albums of all time. 

pst71