In Dimmu’s case, it’s the Norwegian-ized "Antikrist" which is getting a second life thanks to Feb. 7 release of a rerecorded version of the band’s decade-old second album Stormblast. And aside from the title track, it’s about the only song title on the album English speakers have any real hope of translating. Which is just as well, Silenoz explains, because the literal English translations of most of the other song titles - for instance "Nar Sielen Hentes Til Helvete," which has something to do with Hell - wouldn’t make much sense anyway.

And as for doing the lyrics in English this time around, forget it.

"The words just wouldn’t have matched with the music, so it was never really a consideration," he said on the phone from Nuclear Blast USA’s office in L.A., where he was enjoying a short respite from the 4 feet of snow that awaited him back in Norway. "The way the languages are constructed are just too different. We, in essence, would have had to create all new songs, and all we really wanted to do here was present the album the way we had intended it to be in the first place."

Other than playing “Stormblast” and, at times, “Alt Lys Er Svunnet Hen” live, Dimmu - or at least Silenoz and frontman Shagrath, the only band members from then that remain - have all but disavowed themselves from the original Stormblast. It was an album whose intentions and ambitions far outweighed the realities of the studio time and production work the shoestring budget Dimmu’s label at the time, Cacophonous, allowed. The end result was a thin sounding, plodding, keyboard-heavy shell of what they had initially envisioned.

“Fortunately, we only signed a one-album deal with Cacophonous because they made a lot of promises beforehand that they didn’t come close to delivering, so we didn’t have anywhere near the resources we thought we were going to have to do the album right,” Silenoz said. “We were never happy with it and have wished we could do it over again really since the time it was finished.

“So when we finally got the chance, we decided to go ahead and do it and make things right. Now people can see that Enthrone (Darkness Triumphant, Dimmu’s breakout third album) really wasn’t as dramatic a change in style as they might have thought.”

Stormblast was recorded last summer at death metal uber-producer/Hypocrisy mainman Peter Tagtgren’s Abyss Studio by Silenoz, Shagrath and keyboardist Mustis during downtime for Dimmu when bassist Vortex was working with Arcturus and guitarist Galder was recording another Old Man’s Child album. Mayhem’s legendary Hellhammer sat in on drums - and is likely to continue to do so, as his schedule allows, for the foreseeable future.

The album retains much of the original’s raw, somewhat primal black metal spirit, but presents a fuller, richer sound that gives the guitars the heft and prominence they require and strips away or mutes much of the intrusive keyboards that had made long-departed Stian Aarstad an enduring cult hero. Indeed the innocuous instrumental “Sorgens Kammer” has been replaced with the totally reconfigured “Sorgens Kammer - Del II,” now an eerie, lumbering number graced by Shagrath’s malevolent vocals - and no piano or synthesizers.

This was largely necessitated by the fact that Aarstad had “borrowed” melodies from music in the video game “Agony” for the “original,” without the band’s knowledge. So instead of fighting a copyright battle over it with the genuine composer, Silenoz and Shagrath fashioned a new song out of some old riffs and fresh ideas and it went on to become the first video/single from Stormblast - Del II. Another “new” song, the turbulent “Avmaktslave,” is included on the rerelease, the U.S. version of which features a bonus DVD of the Dimmu’s 2004 Ozzfest set in San Antonio with Tony Laureno, ex-of Nile, on drums.

Other than a few festival shows, the band won’t be doing much to promote Stormblast. Instead, they will get back to the work they’ve already started on the next Dimmu album that likely will be recorded in the fall. Material is slowly coming together on what looks to be another ambitious effort, this time more from a compositional standpoint.

Silenoz envisions an album with an epic story akin to King Diamond’s Abigail and he’s trying to get the lyrics worked out first before moving ahead further with the music, which, at this point, he says actually may end up being more stripped down that Dimmu’s fully orchestrated recent efforts.

“It’s totally the opposite of how we usually work, but I have a good idea outline of the story and know where I want to take it, it’s just working those ideas into actual lyrics has been difficult,” he said. “But once we we’re finished doing the Stormblast press and can put all our focus on the material, I’m confident it will all come together.”

Silenoz describes the basic storyline as being set in the Dark Ages where a man’s search for spiritual enlightenment eventually leads him to question the prevailing religious authority of the time (Christianity) and ultimately to be branded a tool of the devil.

“You can see a lot of parallels with that today,” he said. “Religion has become such a divisive thing. That ‘if you’re not with us you’re against us’ mentality” is so pervasive now. So this story’s not so far-fetched.”

Napalm Death: Extremists Against Extremism

“Being an atheist myself I believe, in simple terms, that the way forward for this world is to put religion on the backburner. It’s not gonna help the wider problems, in fact it’s gonna set it back and cause more problems.”

Case in point, just days after we spoke the whole “cartoon controversy” erupted around the world after a Danish newspaper ran caricatures of the Muslim prophet Mohammed - and, of course, there were the bombings in the London Underground last summer that were a jihadist backlash against the Iraq war, which opens a much bigger ideological/theological can of worms we needn’t get into here.

Then there’s the whole matter of “intelligent design” that is being foisted upon school systems here as an option to evolutionary science - then, in many cases, turned aside by more level-headed administrators and judges who see it for the claptrap that is really is.

“There are some things about Darwinism I don’t like, it can be perverted as well,” Greenway said. “There are some real nasty right-wing organizations that use Darwinism as a model because they say, ‘Well, if this evolution is true then survival of the fittest, if there’s people that need help we musn’t help them because that’s just the way. If there is social injustice, we must turn a blind eye.’ And that just doesn’t fly.

“But on the other hand, how can you just put an animal under a microscope and go, ‘Well, this animal clearly has a sophisticated bodily design, therefore it must be a one-off by an intelligent, superior lifeform?’ How do you arrive at a conclusion like that?

“Pretty soon we’ll be back to the world is flat and the Earth is the center of the universe. That’s actually really dangerous. You’re misguiding and twisting people’s power of knowledge to the point where you’re going to cease to absorb logic.”

Social injustice, abuse of power, racism and xenophobia have long been popular targets for Napalm’s wrath - with Nazis, fascists and greedy corporate pigs being particular favorites - which is usually delivered with all the subtlety of a clusterbomb via a musical attack that has become the template for “grindcore.”

That the band has probably made as many enemies as friends along the way is of no concern to Greenway. After nearly 25 of talking shit and bursting eardrums, Napalm (rounded out by bassist Shane Embury, the closest thing the band has to an “original member,” guitarist Mitch Harris and drummer Danny Herrera) are still around and, indeed, getting a bit of the last laugh and doing much better now than they - and the extreme music scene as a whole, for that matter - were a decade ago.

“I get a lot of flak from people in the extreme music scene, and maybe this sounds patronizing, but they are kind of the way they are because they just want to seem to be extreme and part of extremity, they believe, is being ultraconservative,” Greenway said. “Well, I always thought that the extreme music scene was meant to be an alternative to conventional ways of thinking. And for some of these people, by how they sound and the way they act, they’re about as conformist as the most conservative thing out there.

“It makes me laugh. I could care less, I’ll say what I’ve got to say and if people want to attack me for that, they’ll do that. Whatever. People are never going to stop me from talking about progressive things.”

Before Napalm sets down to work on talking about “progressive things” on their new album - their 13th - the band will be doing one more tour of the states with German thrash vets Kreator and covering more of the country than they did during a somewhat abbreviated trek with the reunited Obituary in the fall.

And regardless of where its lyrical direction is heading, Greenway says of the next album that, “I can quite confidently say it’s going to be even better than Code [2004’s The Code Is Red ... Long Live The Code]. We’ve already go some of the songs ready to go, but Shane’s got plenty more riffs. For a bass player, some of the stuff he comes up with is fucking phenomenal. It really is.

“The guitarists in this band are hugely underrated. Some of the riffs these guys come out with, they’re not the generic Slayer or death metal riffs you’ve heard 10,000 times before, they are good riffs that are still extreme that have certain catchiness to them. And it’s not an obvious catchiness, not like they were written to have more commercial potential, they just are great riffs.”

So there you have it.

The Emperor’s (Brief) Return

The shows are being billed as “farewell” performances and will showcase material from the band’s last full-length Prometheus, much of which has never been played live - along with, no doubt, some choice golden oldies. But from what frontman Ihsahn and guitarist Samoth, the band’s founding members, have been saying, it doesn’t seem like this is going to be anything more than a temporary reunion, because they’re already so busy with various other bands/labels/etc. Emperor would, in essence, become a side project. But one last change to see Emperor is certainly better than none at all.

Ihsahn has made one record with Peccatum and will be releasing his solo album, The Adversary (Candlelight USA), in April, which he promises will be “a continuation of my work within the metal genre. ... Powerful, epic, extreme and straight from the heart.” We shall see.

Meantime, Samoth and drummer Trym are set to wrap up work on Disintegrate, the third album from their formidable death metal band Zyklon (which includes Myrkskog’s Destructhor and Secthdamon) in the near future and have concert DVD Storm Detonation Live available in the states in March.

And currently available is an album Samoth did with the underground supergroup of sorts Scum, which features infamous former Emperor drummer Bard “Faust” Eithun in his first full-scale recorded work since being released from prison after a nine-year murder conviction stint, Amen frontman Casey Chaos, Turbonegro’s Happy Tom and Mindgrinder’s Cosmocrator.

Gospels of the Sick (Candlelight USA) was issued late last year and though it will most likely disappoint many extreme metal fans, it’s still a compelling listen. As the project came together in a matter of weeks, the album’s ragged, primitive sound should probably come as no surprise. However, given that Scum boasts four Norwegians (three of them black/death metal veterans) and only one Californian, the album’s predominantly old-school hardcore punk style probably will.

Despite guest appearances from Darkthrone’s Nocturno Culto and another Emperor alum Mortiis, Gospel in many ways owes way more to Black Flag, The Sex Pistols or Discharge than the days of blood and fire that marked the rise of Scandinavian black metal. But its spontaneous combustion-like intensity and gritty sense of purpose cannot be denied - and that definitely counts for something.

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