Abrahadabra

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN FOR: http://demrockritic.in/review-dimmu-borgir-abrahdabra

Metal has a tough audience to please. When a band establishes itself with a certain type of music there is also a sense of elitism that gets attached to that particular sound of the band. Anything sounding remotely more ear-friendly or different is very often written off as ‘sold out’ and tame. Giants like Metallica, In Flames and Children of Bodom have fallen prey to this.

Dimmu Borgir is another band that has faced this treatment ever since they changed their sound to a completely symphony-driven one on ‘Enthrone Darkness Triumphant’. With their new release ‘Abrahadabra’, they seem to finally have achieved exactly what they hoped to achieve with symphony-driven metal. it is very clear that musical design was what mattered most to the band. Every song is riff-heavy. Not in the disjointed way that many bands record their music but one where the modern sections really speak and interact with the orchestral section. There is a wonderful trade-off that takes place between the two. When one is ambient, the other goes melodic and when they play melodies together is when the power in the music really shines forth.

The album itself is supposed to be the sequel to their previous release ‘In Sorte Diaboli’, continuing the story of a priest who defects from Christianity. The musical relevance to the Pagan theme in the album is very fulfilling. From the low, tribal vocal beginnings on ‘Xibir’ to the very organic sounding guitar-orchestra harmonies on ‘Dimmu Borgir’, the music really tells the story on its own. There are never sections where the orchestra drowns out the string rhythms, nor are there bland guitar rhythm sections where you are silently begging for the orchestra to kick in and make the music more interesting.
Vocally, though Shagrath sounds like a blur in comparison to regular black metal screeching, his heavier pledges and the occasional digitized soliloquies sound very good. The clean vocals by Snowy Shaw have a certain grittiness to them that sounds as good as anything by former bass player ICS Vortex. The crowning glory on the vocal from though, are the choirs and the traditional tribal vocals. Both work together to explore a large vocal spectrum and make the album sound more like a film score than anything else.

Having thrown all this praise in, one does at times wish the album was more aggressive in sound. It could do with a few more heavy tremolo barrages, a few more blast beat attacks and definitely a lot more guitar harmonies. Overall though, while this album will continue to divide fans over their opinion on Dimmu Borgir, the fact remains that it has raised the benchmark for symphonic metal songwriting up massive levels and has shown that orchestra can really bring out the relevance of metal in today’s musical times.