Dimmu Borgir - Abrahadabra Review

And you thought In Sorte Diaboli was bad.

The Norwegian black metal superstars of Dimmu Borgir return to once again prove to the world that we'll throw money at whatever crap they put out. With ICS Vortex and Mustis gone, the remaining members have struggled to throw something together before their spare reserves of money run out. The result is worse than anyone would have expected. With the symphonic members of their band gone, Dimmu got the first orchestra they could find to make an album for them and said "good enough". They put a couple guitars and drums over the tracks and called it a day. Who are we even giving money to here? Abrahadabra is 90% orchestra and 10% Shagrath trying to sound evil. It seems like he got too old to scream anymore and has been reduced to talking during all the songs. And who the hell is playing drums here? Daray? Come on man, step it up!

This album is bad, there's no doubt about it. In fact, it's so bad that I bought tickets to see Dimmu on their tour supporting it just so I could yell things at them. Things like "I love you" and "Keep up the good work". It's all part of my devilish plan. I also bought a tour shirt just so I could throw up on it.

Screw you, society!

The lyrics on this album are something else. As you may remember, In Sorte Diaboli was supposed to be the start of a six-part series of albums based around Vortex's new book about a priest becoming the antichrist. While there was no way in hell the band (who had released 6 albums previously (The Stormblast reissue doesn't count)) was going to spend another 20 years retelling Vortex's emo poetry, I thought it would go on for at least more than one measly album. But alas, Abrahadabra is intently focused on whining about past band members being dicks. You know your band is a sellout when you can't even be an unrelenting jackass in peace. So Vortex now gets to focus on Arcturus and Mustis... What happened to him again?...

OH MY GOD NO!

Oh.. different guy? Ok, good, I was scared there for a bit.

As if the album itself wasn't bad enough, Shagrath, Galder and Silenoz decided to add insult to injury in the form of multiple music videos. Since I am a weak man and can only stand watching one at a time, I'll focus on the worse of the two: Dimmu Borgir. The song, not the band (though they're both pretty bad). The entire video focuses on the three musketeers trudging through the song, trying to make it seem like they give a crap. Shagrath is up on some DJ set and the other two are... somewhere else. Plus there's a mysterious drummer because they couldn't get whoever did the drums on the actual album. Cut to some reused footage from Gateways, some stock footage of wolves, and some goddamn promotional pictures, and you've got yourselves a music video. Oh and did I mention the video effects? Well they consist entirely of lens flare and flipping the video upside down for a brief second. I feel insulted just watching this. They spent more money on their stupid costumes than they did on video production. Speaking of costumes, did Shagrath ever tell you how he got those scars? I can sum up everything wrong with this video in one word: everything. Though a picture is worth a thousand words, so I'll include one of those too.

So as you can tell, Abrahadabra is bad. But you already knew that, you went out and bought the album. So Dimmu Borgir wins again, those smug bastards. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go listen to Mourning Palace so I won't feel ashamed anymore of being a Dimmu fan.

-Zombie Viking