Dimmu Borgir: For All Tid - Black Metal Album Review

For All Tid is a surprisingly good album, from a remarkably bad band. If you've ever heard the name "Dimmu Borgir" mentioned within the context of black metal music, you know they suck. Period. There is no getting around it, they share the "trophy" of most pointless and excruciatingly cringe band ever with the likes of Watain and Gorgoroth... not something you want to brag about at parties.

Yet, in the midst of the gargantuan pile of feces that is "modern symphonic black metal", Dimmu Borgir once did the unthinkable... they released a semi-good album. Credit where credit is due - for lack of better expression, since "hardcore satanists" such as "Shagrath" and "Silenoz" might object to the use of the Christian idiom "give unto Cesar" - For All Tid is almost an enjoyable and, hell, even decent black metal album. Yes, you can read that again. Dimmu Borgir's debut is actually not garbage, and that is very shocking when you know the depths to which the band would shamelessly sink in further in their career, all in the name of being "$eriou$ $atani$t$".

Released during the late winter of 1995, meaning well after the Second Wave of Norwegian Black Metal had peaked, the band that would eventually become known as "kings of posers" decided to release their first LP ever, For All Tid, to the controversial but respected record label No Colours.

Maybe because the record producers at No Colours were so exigent - much more so than the poser clowns of Nuclear Blast, who would release future Dimmu Borgir releases - or maybe because the band hadn't yet "sold out"... or simply via beginner's luck, it turns out that For All Tid is in fact semi-respectable black metal music... as long as you consciously force yourself to forget that the musicians responsible for this piece of art would then go on to record utterly worthless garbage such as the retardedly named "Enthrone Darkness Triumphant" (wtf that even means, I don't know).

With that said, this album is far from perfect. It sounds like a mediocre attempt at being Neraines. If you liked "Fenrir Prowling", you might like the more generic and forgettable For All Tid. If you enjoyed the hamfisted attempt at "melodic black metal" found on For All Tid, "Fenrir Prowling" will blow you away.

There is also a bit of controversy with the band being NSBM and all that, and Shagrath releasing an interview - in order to promote this album - in which he claim he wanted to "slit the throat of every black person" and that black metal was made, specifically, for the "arian [sic] race". The band also once claimed that Werwolf, of Satanic Warmaster, had played bass on For All Tid - something absolutely no one was ever able to confirm.

Tracklist of the album For All Tid (1995) by Dimmu Borgir:

Back to the band Dimmu Borgir.