 |
|
Band Name: Dimmu Borgir
Album Name: Invaluable Darkness Tour (DVD)
Rating: 4.5 / 5 User Rating: 3.5 / 5
Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Buy Album: Amazon.com
Rate Album: Rate
|
Tracklist
|
Fans, friends and press gathered to preview a portion of Dimmu Borgir's new DVD 'The Invaluable Darkness' on September 30th 2008 at the Steve Allen Theatre in Hollywood California. Band members Silenoz and Shagrath were both in attendance, Shagrath accompanied by his fiancee Christina Fulton and her son Weston Cage. The event began with a viewing of 'The Serpentine Offering' music video and then the evenings host, Metalocalypse co-creator Brendon Small, came up to the mic. "How awesomely metal was that video?" he asked the audience which had packed the relatively small venue to standing room only "It had fire, and forests and all that shit." Smalls continued to gush about his love for Dimmu Borgir and introduced the DVD. Since the DVD contains several hours of live performances and back stage footage only Part 1 of Disk 2 of the DVD was viewed that evening. That part being Dimmu Borgir's entire performance at the Wacken Open Air Festival in Germany on August 2 2007. The performance had the theatre audience cheering and chanting along with the crowd on the DVD. After this was over, Smalls returned to the stage where he conducted a Q & A session with Silenoz. Smalls asked some questions of his own, some that fans had e-mailed him, and then he let the audience shout out questions. The normally hyper-articulate Smalls actually seemed a bit nervous while Silenoz was in full rock star mode quietly giving one or two sentence answers. After asking a lot of questions about how the DVD was filmed, the session quickly turned comedic as Smalls asked "so do you ever get really hot on stage and think fuck it next time I come out in sweat pants? I'd go to the sweat pants tour." To which Silenoz never actually gave an answer. Another amusing question came from a fan via e-mail and also related to Dimmu's signature leather and spikes outfits: "How do you get your clothes through airport security?" Smalls himself laughed as he read this one and added "this question assumes you actually dress like that all the time."
Now onto the DVD itself. It's been 6 years since Dimmu Borgirs last and pretty much only DVD 'World Misanthropy' was released and 'The Invaluable Darkness' completely blows it out of the water as far as production value and content. 'World Misanthorpy' will always be fun because it shows some of the earlier footage of the band but if you really want to watch a live performance from the band in the comfort of your living room 'The Invaluable Darkness' is the only way to go.
There were at least 10 different camera angles used on each live performance giving you a full idea of the stage set up, the size of the crowd, and how each band member looked on that stage. A process that Silenoz explained was "expensive but worth it if it makes the fans happy". The sound quality is fantastic and mixed extremely well. According to Silenoz there weren't any studio tricks used to doctor the sound because they really wanted to capture what the band sounds like live.
Since the band has a penchant for adding layers and layers of synthesized orchestra during recording, the live version of a song is somewhat more raw because, as Silenoz put it, Keyboardist "Mustis only has two hands" and the DVD really captures this. There is also plenty of the shaky camera, back stage debauchery people expect on a band DVD and also many of the bands music videos are included. It is really a great value for the money boasting a total of 3 disks, 2 DVDs and one bonus audio CD featuring the P3 sessions done in Norway.
Review by: Colette Claire
Read Member Reviews
|
