Dimmu Borgir may have waded even deeper than usual into the realm of symphonic melodrama this time around, but they’ve still got the riffs, so fuck you.
There’s enough variety to satisfy both old-school knuckle-draggers looking for pure eee-ville and the more adventurous, recent Nachtmysium-educated ears.
Far from the extreme sounds of Hypocrisy’s Peter Tägtgren’s day-to-day, Pain is a toweringly poppy and melody-filled slice of polished industrial rock.
A record that smashes conventions and just rocks out. Not Sunset Strip “rocking out,” but more groove-based than one would realistically expect from the genre.
Their sound is close to the technical insanity that is in vogue, but it’s performed with a clarity that puts it far above the dregs of show-off wankery.
There’s good-hearted hamminess to be found in most any power metal band, desperate as so many of those bands are to emulate Iron Maiden’s battle anthems.