In Sorte Diaboli


In Sorte Diaboli is the eighth studio album by Norwegian symphonic black metal band Dimmu Borgir, released in 2007. It is the band's first concept album. A site on the Nuclear Blast website was created for In Sorte Diaboli, in which a new promotional photo can be seen and an audio sample can be heard. This would be the last album by Dimmu Borgir to feature ICS Vortex, Hellhammer and Mustis.

Concept

In Sorte Diaboli is the band's first concept album, with a story located in medieval Europe. It is about a priest who begins to doubt his faith, and then ends up taking the place of the Antichrist. "There's this dude that works as a priest's assistant, and after a while he just discovers that he has nothing to do with Christianity", Silenoz says. "He just sort of has this awakening and realizes that he has different abilities and different powers and is leaning more to the dark side." The words "In Sorte Diaboli" are a repeated line in the song "The Chosen Legacy" and the words also appears towards the end of the song, "The Sinister Awakening". The conclusion of the story in the booklet implies that the story of In Sorte Diaboli is not yet finished. This remains to be seen, as their next album, Abrahadabra, is heavily influenced by Aleister Crowley's Thelema text The Book of the Law. IGN named the album the Top Metal Album of 2007.

Critical reception

In Sorte Diaboli received generally positive critical reception. Allmusic gave the album 3 stars and praised the music, saying "here's really great stuff here in the music, the production, in the sound effects". However they criticised the concept and lyrics of the album, writing "Too bad it all melts down when it comes to the concept, which is ho hum at best". About.com was more positive and gave the album 4 stars and wrote that "he songs are orchestral and melodic, but still plenty of punch and darkness". Both Blabbermouth and Metal Hammer gave the album 9/10, and Kerrang! gave it 4/5.
The album cover was rated by LA Weekly 9 out of 25 from their article The 25 Creepiest Heavy Metal Album Covers.

Chart and sales performance

In their native Norway, the album peaked at number 1, which marks the first time in history of a black metal band reaching the number 1 spot. The album sold approximately 14,000 copies in its first week. The album also sold well in Sweden, Finland, Austria and Switzerland.
RegionChart
Peak PositionNotes
United StatesBillboard 200
#43
Dimmu Borgir is the first Norwegian band to break the U.S. Top 50 since a-ha.
United StatesBillboard Top Independent Albums
#2
Norway
#1
UKBanned
In Sorte Diaboli was disqualified twice by The Official UK Charts Company. The first disqualification was for the inclusion of a mirror inside the Digipack; the second was because the album included a flyer promoting a "meet the band" competition.

Track listing

All songs written by Shagrath, Silenoz and Galder. Lyrics by Silenoz

Personnel

; Dimmu Borgir
; Technical