DIMMU BORGIR Guitarist Says Band's Fans Are Split Between 'Very Conservative Ones' And 'Very Open-Minded Ones'

In a recent interview with "Tinnitus" metal radio, guitarist Sven Atle Kopperud (a.k.a. Silenoz) of Norwegian symphonic black metallers DIMMU BORGIR was asked if he thinks heavy metal fans tend to be a bit conservative and only listen to metal and do not like other genres of music. He responded (hear audio below): "I think it's two groups. You have the very conservative ones and then you have the very open-minded ones. I think, speaking on behalf of our band and maybe our fanbase, there's a good 50-50 [split] there. There's fans that have been following us from day one, who are open to changes, open to new stuff, and then you have the more conservative ones who like certain songs of each album or just those albums or whatever. And that's fine. We're all different. That's how it is."

Pressed about whether it bothers him to some degree that there are some fans who want to see DIMMU BORGIR play an entire set featuring material from the "For All Tid" (1995),"Stormblåst" (1996) and "Enthrone Darkness Triumphant" (1997) albums, Silenoz said: "I totally understand it from their point of view, because when I listen to some of my favorite bands, of course, I have my favorite records that I want them to play more songs off. But they also, I'm sure, most of them understand that when we play a show for 80 or 90 minutes, after so many albums, you cannot just take obscure songs of the first and second or the fifth album, for that matter, because most people in the audience, they're not familiar with it, or they know more the known songs, so to speak. But that's the challenge of putting a setlist together, because you cannot please everybody, so you have to start there. And then you kind of have to see what the popularity is and also what we wanna play — what we wanna represent from the new album. So it's a mix of everything."

Silenoz admitted last year that DIMMU BORGIR can't be easily categorized as a black metal act. "The best compliment for me is when people can't label the sound of the album or the band," he said. "Of course, you can hear the black metal influences of the past on [the band's latest album] 'Eonian' — on certain tracks maybe more than ever — but they're camouflaged really well. If people still label DIMMU BORGIR as symphonic black metal, fine, but we've always been more than that. We've always been looked at as the black sheep in the black sheep family, and we've always caught shit because of what we do, but that's helped us along the way."

"Eonian" was released in May 2018 via Nuclear Blast.