Four years after ‘Death Cult Armaggedon’ and its lengthy recording and tours, Dimmu is back in full shape with ‘In Sorte Diaboli’, their new album. This epic concept album tells a story taking place in the Middle Ages and focusing on God and the Devil, with man in the middle. Heavier, less symphonic, ‘In Sorte Diaboli’ is one of their best records to date. Silenoz was in Paris to spread the disease and the doubt.t...

-Tell me more about this title, In Sorte Diaboli…

-Silenoz: It’s a Latin title and that’s the first time we use this kind of title for an album. We thought it would make sense to give this album this title because the main story take place in medieval times and early renaissance, and it basically means, directly translated, the faithful connection to the Devil.

-And what is this story about?

-S: There’s the story of a young man starting to work for a local church, the local bishop, because he want to serve God and, after several years, one week, he suddenly start to have some dreams and visions coming to him and he understand that his actual bloodline is in direct connection to the Devil. Still close to the church, he start to develop his own cult in a way, he gets his own following and after several weeks, maybe a few months, then all local people are really understanding what he’s really about and he finishes burned on the stake, obviously. The symbolism that I wanted to portrait through the whole story is the same than the one which Lucifer went through when he was thrown out of Heaven from God because Lucifer started to become a potential thread for God and angels because he was different, more intelligent, more beautiful, and he was an individual angel. So he didn’t fit in god’s plan and I kind of wanted this story resemble to that because this person wants to conform to the church obviously because everyone else is doing this at this time. But he does understand that he’s different and for him it’s the most natural thing to see God where he really his, his dark side if you want to call it that so. And personally, that’s something I’ve done since I’m a kid, so it’s personal too, in many ways, but I think, once people read the story and the lyrics to the album, all this will make much more sense and also people will recognize themselves in many of the situations and will understand more the spirit of the album.

-So it’s a concept album in a way: do you intend to play it all the way through on stage?

-S: No, we most likely will not play the whole album live, but we’re gonna do a proper stage show, which will be symbolize the story at this time of history, so we’ll see how much money we can spend on this, but we’re gonna do everything we can to make people feel that they get full value for their money when they come to us play. We haven’t figured out the whole stage set up yet, but it will be something different than just us standing there. We have to see how much room we have for it on the stage because we are six people in the band!

-The religious wars which flourish since some years throughout the world surely inspired you?

-S: The story might as well been told by current times, that why this album has a conclusive end of the story because it symbolize what happens in the world today, how people are treated because they think differently and because most people fear what they don’t know instead of embracing it and seeking out, they see everything that they don’t know as something negative

-Can we talk about historical Slayer’s Christ Illusion there in a way?

-S: I guess yes! I mean, I don’t question the fact that Jesus lived, but in those days there was magicians as well, and a lot of things we don’t know but we think we know, and that’s something that also who brought myself to question to a lot of things, but at the same time, knowing that, I might not get an answer to every question I have. But for most religious people, they have a book where they can find an answer if they want in anything they read. That’s not how our real life really works!

-Another change of style, as you said recently for Kerrang that you don’t consider Dimmu as a black metal band anymore and that you reached the top of orchestrations with your previous album, which are less present on this record, so how you re-define the band today?

-S: It’s hard, because I think we have created our own sound since day one and just perfected it more and more with each album. So we have drifted away from that categorization that is known as black metal. We’re still very much have the identity and the foundations and everything connected to the music from that point of view but still we have the music and everything else taking the part of his own, basically. We don’t care anymore, and I think we really never cared anyway, but we don’t care if people label us as black metal or whatever, because at the end of the day, it’s either good or bad music, and it’s up to each individual if they like it or not, so we’re not too concerned about labelling our music.

-Download festival in June: is it a challenge for you to convince audiences with is not especially yours?

-S: Of course. It’s a very historic event, back in the eighties when it was Monsters of Rock. I remember when I was a kid I looked at reviews of Monsters Of Rock and today basically I’m playing there myself. It’s also a great opportunity to show the English crowd and everyone who travel there that is the music we play, and that’s gonna be new for many people I think. We’re also gonna play other big festivals this summer but Download is something we’re looking forward to, it’s something new and really big and historic.

-Is Hellhammer a permanent member since the re-recording of Stormblast or just a studio and live musician?

-S: No, he’s still not a permanent member but he’ll touring with us as well. He’s very enthusiastic and dedicated to the band, saying it’s his priority before Mayhem and the other 2999 bands in which he also plays! He participated a little bit to the album, coming with ideas for drums and other stuff, so he’s very much part of this album on which he did an amazing job, maybe his best performance on CD so far, that tells a lot!

-‘In Sorte Diaboli’ was recorded at the famous Fredman studios by Fredrik Nordstrom (In Flames, Dark Tranquility) and Patrick Sten, as for the last studio recordings.

-S: Yes, we were thinking about maybe hiring someone else, but at the same time, why changing something that really works good and it’s better to try to improve everything with this album that we didn’t do with the previous one, especially for the production side. Neither Patrick or Fredrik is involved in the writing on the music, but they of course help having the sound and bring some ideas too, which are helpful, they know the music we make now so it’s easy for them to get a picture of what we want, a good and punchy sound as possible, to make the record sounds big. And besides, Fredrik is crazy enough to willing to work with us!

-What are the main differences between Fredrik Nordstrom and Peter Tagtgren?

-S: they are not that different because they are both perfectionists, they also want the best performance out of each member of the band so, even if you think they’ve been taking the best take, they make you do it again and again and again and so really kick you. I think that they both have their own way of doing sound of course, they both also rely on their experience as producers too, and another thing which is good is that they also both have metal backgrounds, so they understand pretty much where we come from and, they were helpful and understanding and patient, because to work with us, you have to be patient all the way!

-There’s a video for ‘Serpentine Offering’, signed by Patrick Illeus: when we’ll be able to see it?

S: It will be broadcasted in beginning of April, I think, on the Internet, on our website. It’s like a small three and a half minutes long song, but it’s like a short movie, and you can tell that it’s Patrick Illeus that did the movie or the video because he has also his own style. We thought it would be difficult at first to put like the main storyline of the album down to three and a half minutes, but the symbolism that we used in the video is so obvious that it makes a good representation for what the album is about.

-It’s like a trailer…

-S: Yes, like a trailer. If you picture yourself the story of the album as a movie, then that could be a trailer.

-Cover once again by this great artist, Joachim Luttke, with a huge 32 pages booklet and the mirror, because words are written ‘upside down’, and a special leather edition: a good way to fight downloading?

S: Yes, we have a mirror and stuff, and actually I don’t know how many different editions it will be! And yes, as we’ve always been a visual band, that’s very important. Also, it’s important to give the people who actually buy the CD good value for the money because I remember myself, when I was a kid in the eighties, I was going to see vinyls and I looked at the artwork, just to fully escape into. It’s a bit smaller with a CD but I think that’s something that comes with the musical expression and it gives the listener and the fan something to escape with. Of course, you have to have something that goes with the story, which is important. Therefore, we wanted Joachim working on the team this time as well, he did a difficult cover. This time the whole idea is based on a painting by Hans Membling from Germany, I think he was living around the fifteenth century, so the basic background painting is by Hans Membling’s but Joachim added his own performance there, added some more details to the picture, and I think it came out very good. Using the Baphomet is probably a cliché as well, but it’s the first time I’ve ever seen the Baphomet used in his correct way because a lot of people say that lord Baphomet is not grim and doesn't look evil enough, but they forget it’s not supposed to be a goat, it’s supposed to be a mixture of goat, donkey, a howl and a dog, and to have all those features in a face is something very hard to do so I think Joachim did a great job making the Baphomet look as correct as possible. We’re very proud of this album, which symbolizes for me the great balance, and that’s something religion doesn’t have, the way I feel, because religious people basically see things one way and they don’t see it from others' perspectives, so to me that’s a very great opposition to what religion stands for.

-And what about Insidious Disease, the death metal project with Shane from Napalm death?

S: Oh, I wish I had more answers for you there! We have everything ready, but on stand by to record it, so I think we’re gonna do it as a team in July, because that’s the only month we have off from Dimmu and it’s not going to take us too long to record it because the drums will be done by Tony in the states and then we’ll just do guitars and Shane will do the bass in England. We just have to figure out the contractual and legal stuff first, and it should be go out the end of the year, I hope.

-Two extra tracks: USA: ‘Ancestral Fever’ and Japan ‘Black Metal’ by Venom.

S: ‘Ancestral Fever’ is actually the European bonus track, the American bonus track being ‘The Heretic Hammer’. Those two songs are of our own of course, but the Venom’s cover song is something we recorded for the fun of it. That way, practically all territories has their own bonus track, and in Japan, there always will be more bonus tracks for import reasons, and for the States, which probably gonna be our biggest market with this album, we thought it would had more sense to give them another bonus track. And of course Europe gonna have one, so we’re trying to make basically everyone important, I guess, which is nice!

-Dimmu in France?

-S: We’ve been asked to play the Fury Fest, but we were already booked for other festivals, so many the next time! But we’re gonna definitely play on tour in October I think, with two shows scheduled in Paris and other places in France as well as we have a huge following here, so we look really forward to that. We played shows there and we see that there are more and more people coming.

Interview made on March 22nd, 2007 in Paris by Jean Paul Coillard.

Thanks to Valérie and Jean Marc from Nuclear Blast.