Dimmu Borgir did not need to prove they could still sound expensive. That was never the question. The question on Grand Serpent Rising was whether the band could make the size feel earned after eight years away from full-length records.
The answer is mostly yes. This is a massive, clean, deliberately arranged Dimmu Borgir album, but it is not just a museum piece for the symphonic black metal years. The best parts of Grand Serpent Rising happen when the guitars push back against the orchestration, when Shagrath is treated like the center of the record instead of another layer in the mix, and when Fredrik Nordstrom's production gives the band enough clarity to sound heavy without turning everything into a polished blur.
The Verdict
Grand Serpent Rising is not Dimmu Borgir trying to reclaim raw black metal credibility. Anyone still waiting for that record has been following the wrong band for two decades. This is Dimmu Borgir as a cinematic extreme metal band, with the scale, pacing, and mythic overstatement that come with that lane.
The album does not spend all 13 tracks hiding behind atmosphere. "Tridentium" opens with the kind of dramatic framing expected from this band, but the record starts to define itself when "Ascent" lets the rhythm section move with force instead of just supporting the arrangement. The guitars have space. The drums are not buried under the choir-and-strings architecture. A Dimmu Borgir album can collapse fast when the symphonic elements become the point rather than the weapon.
That is the main strength here: control. Grand Serpent Rising sounds huge, but it rarely sounds careless.
Where The Record Works
"Ulvgjeld & Blodsodel" remains the clearest proof of concept. It was the right single because it lays out the album's priorities without needing a long explanation: Norwegian language, sharp vocal placement, orchestral lift, and enough blackened riffing to keep the song from floating away. The chorus does not soften the track. It gives the arrangement a focal point.
"Slik Minnes en Alkymist" is one of the better examples of the album using language and pacing as part of the mood. It does not feel like a novelty choice. It gives the record a colder identity than the English-language grandeur around it, and the arrangement benefits from that shift. Dimmu Borgir have always been theatrical, but their best theatrical work still sounds rooted in something specific. This track has that.
"Phantom of the Nemesis" and "Recognizant" also help the middle of the album avoid becoming a decorative corridor. The riffs are more legible, the drums have more forward motion, and Shagrath's delivery cuts through instead of being swallowed by the frame. When Grand Serpent Rising remembers that Dimmu Borgir are still a metal band first, it is a much better record.
That is the line this band always has to walk. Symphonic black metal gives you scale. It also gives you endless ways to hide weak songs behind expensive sound. Grand Serpent Rising has a few moments where the scale does too much work, but the album is strongest when the writing underneath is firm enough to survive without the decoration.
Where It Drags
The record's length is the one real problem. Thirteen tracks and roughly 70 minutes is a lot of Dimmu Borgir in one sitting, especially when several songs operate in the same dramatic temperature. "Repository of Divine Transmutation" has the title and the atmosphere, but it is not as immediately defined as the tracks around it. "At the Precipice of Convergence" carries weight, yet it also shows the risk of this album's approach: when every moment is arranged to feel important, the truly important moments have to fight harder.
That does not make the record weak. It makes it overbuilt in places. Dimmu Borgir are not a minimalist band, and nobody should want them to be, but Grand Serpent Rising would hit harder with a slightly leaner middle section. The strongest material has enough identity to stand up. The lesser material sometimes feels like it is waiting for the production to finish the argument.
The closing track, "Gjoll," pulls some of that back into focus. As a finale, it works because it does not just chase speed or spectacle. It feels like a door shutting. After an album this broad, that kind of ending is smarter than another attempt to top the previous orchestral peak.
How It Fits The Catalog
The obvious comparison points are Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia and Death Cult Armageddon, partly because Nordstrom is back in the orbit and partly because Grand Serpent Rising is clearly interested in that era's balance of aggression and scale. It does not have the same shock of arrival as those records. It could not. The genre already absorbed that vocabulary.
What it does have is a steadier hand than Eonian. Where Eonian could feel too smooth in spots, Grand Serpent Rising lets more edges remain visible. The riffs do not always dominate, but they are present enough to make the record feel less like symphonic metal wearing black metal colors and more like Dimmu Borgir remembering which half of that equation has to do the dirty work.
For readers catching up on the lane, Metal Mantra's death metal vs black metal breakdown explains why Dimmu Borgir sit in a different world than the American death metal tradition, even when the extremity overlaps. We also covered the original Dimmu Borgir album announcement when Nuclear Blast first put the record on the calendar.
Final Call
Grand Serpent Rising is not a perfect comeback, but it is a serious one. It has too much bulk in the middle, and a few tracks lean harder on grandeur than on memorable songwriting. But when the record locks in, it sounds like Dimmu Borgir with purpose: grand, cold, controlled, and still capable of making symphonic black metal feel like an event instead of a costume.
Start with "Ulvgjeld & Blodsodel," "Slik Minnes en Alkymist," "Phantom of the Nemesis," and "Gjoll." If those hit, the full record is worth the time.
Buy or stream Grand Serpent Rising through Amazon.
