Dimmu Borgir Interview
taken from the Nuclear Blast winter catalogue
By the end of the 1980s some Norwegian musicians - disgusted by the commercialism of Death Metal - began to reanimate the almost forgotten Black Metal, partly with illegal actions as well. Now, several years later, the usual buisness life has gotten its entry in this "scene". Bands reveal as mushrooms from the ground and it has gotten hard to seperate the _trends_ from the _originals_ They still exist though, those bands which are not willing to swim in this massive stream. One of them are Dimmu Borgir, who just have produced a great album and meanwhile signed to Nuclear Blast. Mastermind Shagarath explains why:
"Our Contract with Cacophonous was meant for only one record. Not without a reason we have been that careful. This company has some good reputation, but we wanted to see how things would develop first. Our cautiousness was right. After we did "Stormblast", we noticed that those people haven't made any attempts on promoting it. They did not arrange the necessary gigs and were lagging with the merchandise also. We had some other ideas about "professional teamwork" and that was the reason why we were looking for a new deal. I think we are very well adviced with Nuclear Blast and our chances are not bad to get No. 1 when it comes to Black Metal. With Dissection there is only one other "true" band on this label (har, har)," the talkactive Norwegian laughs in the phone. Remarkable about this Norwegian scene is that many musicians, also the ones of Dimmu Borgir, appear on several other line-ups as well. Sometimes it is pretty difficult to tell if those are only side projects or attempts to make easy money or serious band projects. "That is quite typical for our scene and personally I don't like this mess very much, but it is very hard to find really good players. Our drummer played in Old Man's Child before he joined us. Anyway, to all Dimmu Borgir members this band has major priority, also for me! Speaking for myself I can say that I am not keen on participating in any side projects for now. I don't have the necessary time right now and it's rather stressful like it is now anyway, writing songs, doing the business stuff, etc. On top of that, Hot Records is stressing me out, too." The vocalist is responsible for signing bands and promotion at the underground label, which also released "Devil's Path". For sure this is no easy job if you have this fast growing northern scene in mind. This "explosion" lead many of the more popular Black Metallers to act up against the *elite*-acts and -persons. Shagarath reacts diplomatic: "I am not sure if this is a very wise thing to do. Possibly such statements sound lame but acts such as Darkthrone or Satyricon *are* really big and it is ok if they call themselves *elite*. Actually I don't listen to the newer bands because they simply are not interessting to me. The scene if filled with bad bands which only try to copy the popular acts."
With "Stormblast", Dimmu Borgir have shown their ability to compose original music. Especially the classical moments place this album far beyond the other standard releases which mostly try to impress with pure speed a la Darkthrone and Immortal. "We want to kept strictly seperated from other acts. Therefore we hardly listen to CDs of the mentioned bands. Our keyboards player does not even listen to Metal at all. This way he includes many new ideas in our music, taken from the Classic. At least I haven't heard any other Black Metal band with Piano."
And with excitement in his voice he continues talking about the forthcomming release "Enthrone Darkness Triumphiant": "We already have several tracks done and they are perfect in any way! In those songs we combine different styles of music, classical music, Heavy and Black Metal, but also Death- and Thrash parts."
The current MCD "Devil's Path" could be considered as an appetizer for upcomming material. "It's boring if you just do the same thing as a band over and over again. When we started to record this MCD, we wanted to create something more aggressive than "Stormblast". Besides, I wanted to play keyboards on this record. By this point of time we kinda were forced to do this because our keyboarder was in the army anyway." Next to two new songs, "Devil's Path" includes two different versions of coversongs from Celtic Frost - "Nocturnal Fear". "We are big fans of this Switch band," he admits. "Besides with bands such as Destruction, Sodom, Dark Angel or Kreator we also grew up with Celtic Frost and still admire it. My favourite album by them is "Morbid Tales". The cover artwork is so amazing that I am thinking of getting it tattoed on my chest."
(typed in and translated by Andreas "Nudnik" Bauer. This is just ONE source of Dimmu Borgir information. If you disagree with the written feel free to keep those thoughts yourself because I don't care about them anyway...)