With flickering flames and that familiar whiff of sulphur hanging in the air, DIMMU BORGIR have finally returned. Eight long years after Eonian, the Norwegians are back with Grand Serpent Rising, and the good news is that this doesn’t feel like a band trying to recapture former glory. Instead, it sounds like a band that knows exactly who they are and still has something to prove.
I’ve never been among those fans who dismissed everything DIMMU BORGIR released after Death Cult Armageddon, but I have to admit that Eonian never fully clicked with me. It had moments, plenty of them in fact, but too often the songs felt buried beneath layers of orchestration and studio wizardry.
Grand Serpent Rising works because the band have finally stopped burying every good idea under three more. The orchestral side is still there, but it no longer dominates everything in sight. More than once I caught myself focusing on the guitar work, which wasn’t always the case on Eonian.
Fredrik Nordström’s production helps. It’s big, obviously – nobody comes to a DIMMU BORGIR album looking for a raw rehearsal-room sound – but it never turns into a wall of indistinguishable noise. The riffs have definition, the drums crack when they need to, and Shagrath sounds like he actually means every word he’s barking.
“Ascent” was the first track that really grabbed me. It has that self-assured swagger DIMMU have always excelled at, somewhere between menace and theatre. “Ulvgjeld & Blodsødel” pushes in a similar direction, while “Slik Minnes en Alkymist” brings a colder mood that feels rooted in the band’s Norwegian identity rather than their symphonic excess.
I’ve seen a few people complain about the running time, and I understand why. Seventy minutes is a lot to ask from any listener. Yet the longer songs justify themselves better than I expected. “The Qryptfarer” and “The Exonerated” never feel like collections of disconnected ideas stitched together for the sake of sounding epic. Even “Gjǫll”, which easily could have overstayed its welcome, manages to hold attention until the final notes fade out.
Not everything lands perfectly. There are still moments where the band’s love of grandeur gets the better of them, and trimming five or ten minutes from the album probably wouldn’t have hurt. But those are relatively small complaints.
What surprised me most is how energized DIMMU BORGIR sound. This doesn’t feel like a veteran band going through familiar motions. It feels like a band that still has something to say. Whether it ultimately joins the ranks of Enthrone Darkness Triumphant or Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia is another question entirely, but it’s easily the most convincing thing they’ve released in years.
https://dimmuborgir.bfan.link/grandserpentrising
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