Death Cult Armageddon

Dimmu Borgir – Death Cult Armageddon (Nuclear Blast)
Black metal. The production on this one is stellar, and the band has gone the way of Cradle by recording with a full orchestra. Still, not as gothic-influenced as COF, and a lot more black. The horn section here is just stellar, they sound so great and add so much to the blast beats, of which there are tons. Overall, a very solid, solid release, with very crunchy guitars, very deep bass, awesome vocals, and even some clean, operatic singing. I really like this album, perhaps even enough to make it a top 10 for the year.
Tracks:
1) Starts out with the requisite strange noise that’s supposed to be scary, and then blasts into full metal madness. Nice.
2) THIS IS THE MOST AWESOME TRACK, EVER! It starts out with mostly just the orchestra, and it sounds like an epic movie score. Then the metal really starts to flow, and the horn section is just spectacular. The epic thing is done again, followed by clean vocals, and then it moves into more of a quiet, strings and piano part, and then it blasts off again. Simply superb.
3) More standard metal, nice riffing, and then just really good, really basic black metal.
4) Sung in Norwegian, so I’ve no idea what the hell the song is about, but it sounds really nice, with some cool dual guitar melodies.
5) Starts out with funny sample, and then blasts into total Darkthrone worship. Which is to say, this is awesome, and it incorporates so many different styles. FCCs.
6) A slower track, with very ingenious orchestration and arrangements, and really heavy guitar and string and horn and piano parts. Awesome.
7) Another song in Norwegian, so I’ll just say I really like the music, even though it is standard fare for these guys.
8) Holy thrash attack, Batman! Heavy, fast, and technical, and it seems like they left the orcehstra out of this one, which works just fine. A very chaotic track, it even seems to mix some very modern metalcore elements into its sound.
9) But they brought the orchestra back for this one, and the intro to it is so trippy, right out of Nightmare Before Christmas. Probably my favorite song on the CD, and a very easily detectable FCC (“shit”) at –4:19, easily bleeped out. It even has some techno-ish moments towards the end. So cool.
10) Another long track, with a long quiet intro, but it’s worth it, especially since they do some wicked soloing.
11) More samples to start the song, and more black metal material than ever before, which is why this isn’t my favorite track.