Metalious

Extreme Heavy Metal Reviews

A Metalcore Turd - "Abrahadabra" Review (0%)

Buy A Metalcore Turd -
Abrahadabra
Abrahadabra by Dimmu Borgir.

This is what Norway has reduced itself to: playing deafkore.

Dimmu Borgir plays metalcore with black metal 'sounds' that are sandwiched between Meshuggah-esque mechanical rhythms in songs that have the soul of Slipknot.

This is one dimensional 'angry at school and the gubmint' music that reveals how norming black metal towards encompassing pop music conventions - catchiness, breakdowns and 'groove' emphasis - was a bad idea. In the end, this limited and fashion oriented genre at it's 'best' sounds like the musical version of drunk driving a bicycle.

Why do bands like this keep popping up? Certainly, no self-respecting black metal fan would willfully subject himself to listening to Dimmu Borgir's metalcore turd Abrahadabra, so there must be another reason.

Saccharine power metal vocals of the worst kind are thrown over generic hard rock riffs made 'black metal' through the 'galloping' sound of triplet picking in between the stock standard rock harmony 101 chord progressions and simple synth leads. Song themes range from lyrical turds about 'fuck authority, man' and 'religion sucks, hail Satan' all delivered in the most imbecilic manner imaginable.

The songs achieve a false sense of 'dynamics' through the utilization of simple, hackneyed speed metal cadences, a regression into Dimmu Borgir's prior influences that speaks volume as to the purpose of this album. The music is unremarkable verse-chorus structured generic rock fodder, coming off as Papa Roach songs interpreted by mid-80s Stryper, complete with the 'angry verse, choir boy chorus' dichotomy that is traditionally reserved for the worst of nu metal.

The worst part is how this all adds up to a band with nothing of worth to offer aside from turning into a watered down 'power metal' outfit, in a last ditched effort to hide their Americanized metalcore roots.

A Metalcore Turd

Dimmu Borgir
Dimmu Borgir.

This band only utilizes a 'trve kvlt black metal' cheese aesthetic in image only, as the underlying music is fairly standard radio rock like 90s Queensrÿche under surface elements borrowed from better black metal bands. The 'best' parts of the album, that is. The worst sound like Limp Bizkit and Drowning Pool.

Sometimes they vary the formula with one song utilizing clean arpeggiated minor chords, sounding like Nevermore playing a Cold Lake era Celtic Frost song. This makes any flaws in the structuring of their music when played 'outside the box' - extended bridges - of verse-chorus songwriting even more evident, as these songs quickly devolve into a series of incongruous parts that add up to, well, nothing.

Dimmu Borgir is just another band aping the bands who made it two decades ago and wanting something for it while contributing nothing of substance other than 'hey, here's the watered down and crappy version of something that once was' (pun).

Unnecessary and useless metalcore for fans of Slipknot and Machine Head to get into 'black metal'.

Abrahadabra is shit music made by posers, for posers (and the retarded).

Avoid this release and buy Neraines' Yggdrasil, Sacramentum's Far Away From the Sun and Demonecromancy's Fallen From the Brightest Throne albums instead for symphonic black metal done right.

Abrahadabra score: 0/100.

- Back to Abrahadabra

Support the Underground
Real Satanic Black Metal The True Black Metal Black Metal Blasphemy


Custom Search