For most, Dimmu Borgir needs no introduction. In the 10 years since their inception, Dimmu Borgir have become one of the dominant flag-bearers of Norwegian black metal along with bands such as Satyricon and Emperor, selling massive numbers of albums worldwide and claiming numerous awards. Their latest release, "Death Cult Armageddon", finds them recording with a full orchestra and has garnered them unprecedented success both in the metal underground and in some more mainstream areas. Ross caught up with Dimmu frontman Shagrath via telephone near the end of their 2003 North American Tour:

Shagrath: Yeah it’s been overwhelming actually. The thing is, I’ve been a little bit skeptical about it from the beginning because there were four bands you know. And when you have two bands playing 30 minutes and then the changeover and Nevermore plays 45 and then we play almost 90 minutes. We were a little skeptical about that because it would maybe be too much for the people you know. But I think it’s been going very well, the whole tour and the response have been very very good for all bands, so I’m very happy with it.

Shagrath: Yeah, for the live situation we don’t use the orchestra, just a lot of samples and keyboards. We basically separate live and studio into two separate things, so it’s not exactly the same but it still works fine with the keys. It’s more aggressive live so it works.

Shagrath: Yeah, basically. I mean we’ve always been an atmospheric band, using a lot of samples and keyboard effects and also a lot of our songs are built off of keyboard riffs and all that. So I’m sure we will continue to use it but hopefully we will try to use it maybe in a different way next time because basically we don’t want to repeat ourselves too much. Even if this album has been very successful and we’ve gotten a lot of good response from it, for us it’s important to evolve in new directions and find new things to work with. I’m sure we’re going to use the orchestra on the next album too but maybe in a different way, I’m not sure yet.

Shagrath: You know actually I’m very happy with where we are today; what we have accomplished through the ten years of existence. It’s been a lot of hard, very very hard work. You know, I’m very happy where we are right now. Of course, we want to become bigger and more professional as a band and I’m sure we will and all that. But, first of all we make music for ourselves and everything else just comes as a big bonus, basically. It’s been overwhelming and everything but of course we want to become bigger as a band. But we have already accomplished a lot of things and, we are happy.

Shagrath: Basically, that’s what the Death Cult album is all about, it’s like we’re kind of evolving into new directions with the music while at the same time we try to keep some of our old-school elements, the old-school riffs that we use and that we are known for on the first album. And also the first two albums we did was all in Norwegian lyrics, so we just thought it would be cool to keep some of those old elements, you know, keep the black flame alive. And even if other people don’t seem to understand what the lyrics are about they still seem to enjoy the songs and get into it so it was basically a good thing to choose a couple of Norwegian songs. And it turns out very different and more strong in our own language, yeah better.

Shagrath: Well, you know we came from the same area in Norway. Some of us in the band had been a part of the whole black metal thing for many many years also before we started Dimmu ten years ago. We were never involved in any crimes like the black circle was, and now you still have bands like Mayhem going very strong but it’s all about the music now.

Shagrath: Ah, not really, I mean I might have a beat in my head that I might like to work with y’know, but there doesn’t seem to be any free time to experiment. I do have a home studio now and all that so I might could work out some things, but there’s never any time to do anything. When it comes to music I’m quite open-minded. I can just feel that the older I get the more open I get as well. We’re not just listening to old-school black metal any more. There a lot of other kinds of music which can be very appealing and you can also find a lot of dark elements in other types of music than just black metal.

Shagrath: You know I haven’t listened to music in a long time, almost for a month now, so I haven’t really paid attention to any new bands at all. Of course I got a lot of free CDs on tour, but I haven’t had the chance to sit down and really listen to any of them.

Shagrath: Yeah we’ve got about 5 gigs left. We’re basically gonna have one month off and the plan is to go Japan and Australia, but we’ll see what happens. First we have to get home and relax a little. We’ve been too much touring lately so we feel a little burned out for the moment.

Shagrath: Thanks!