Hello friends.

Here I am with another blog article! This time, I am going to wax long about two things I like, so you’ll have to deal with that. Been a while since I’ve written a blog article! I had the busiest-as-hell July, but I wanna get writing. This isn’t 2007 anymore. Nice blogs cost money now, and i’m shelling out the “hard”-earned cash for this, so I want to get my money’s worth. So I’m going to get my money’s worth by explaining why a Norwegian symphonic black metal band could and should compose music for the biggest space fantasy of all time.

So, I’ve been a primarily-listening-to-metal guy probably since about 2006. It was touch and go with punk and conscious rap there for a while, but eventually the guitars and growls won out. Maybe if there had been conscious rap about Vikings or troll sagas…who can say?! In my early years, and for much of the following, I stayed pretty close to Finnish metal, ignoring Swedish, Norwegian, and other Nordic bands. I’d heard Dimmu Borgir before, but honestly never caught onto them. I think this is mostly because I was introduced to their music through their music videos, which mostly feature them standing around, alone, in big empty spaces looking…scary? I understand metal budgets are cheap, but it doesn’t help the music to have the band members standing around like costumed amusement park haunted-house employees, fingers clenched as if holding an invisible pomegranate, grimacing into the ether.

Earlier this year, my Spotify algorithm was like “please listen to something else other than these four bands and Johnny Mathis” and threw me Dimmu Borgir, and I said back “okay, fine, it has a skull on the album cover, whatever”. This time, Dimmu Borgir worked. And boy, did it work! “Gateways” was the one that got me hooked (which I always thought was a funny coincidence). In the ensuing weeks, I listened to their Abrahadbra album hella. (Don’t worry, Dimmu fans, I am slowly listening to their older, more pure black-metal stuff. Calm down).

In this immersion, I would often watch their live videos while working from home, that is, processing online orders for a bookstore (nothing reminds one of the written word more than screechy vocals and choir-laden, double-bass apocalypse!). In their career performing live, they’ve sometimes performed with a whole entire orchestra, and sometimes, the orchestra will play an orchestra-only version of their songs! I was enjoying these too, in a music-score kind of way, when it struck me. Dimmu Borgir could totally compose music for fucking Star Wars.

Now, my history with Star Wars is long and conflicted and could cover 10,000 blog articles, but the short version is: I love the old movies to death, abhor the prequels, got excited for the Disney era, loved Force Awakens, and hated everything else except Solo. I don’t watch the cartoons and Mando was like whatever. Basically, I haven’t been happy with it for a long time. In my own life head-canon, I somehow get rich enough to wrangle Star Wars from the Disney claws and can finance my own fucking Star Wars movies (or at least get license to from them). With this plan in the back of my head, I am always on the look-out for Star Wars-y music that will serve as soundtracks to these hypothetical new films (that would probably take place far after Return of the Jedi, and for the record, would be good and would not be shit).

So, all right, enough talk and set up, this isn’t a recipe! Here is why I think Dimmu Borgir could compose some fuckin’ Star Wars music.

Exhibit A: “Eradication Instincts Defined (Orchestral Version)

Doesn’t this just sound like some sweet old Star Wars music? Right off the bat, it sounds like some dark-side user and their cadre of cronies are up to no good. Can’t you just see it in your mind? Some dark lord marching along with some troopers behind them? Or perhaps, this could be the theme of a new villainous organization. I might remove the choir, since Star Wars barely had that shit, but keep the instrumentation. I just love it.

Approaching 1:50, the song’s mood changes to some urgency. High tension between the stars! For this, I can see some officers on some good-guy ship discussing some plans to deal with a nasty blow to their war strategy (or something like that). Then we get to 3:10, and something bad has happened. Oh man! Someone is tumbling to their imminent death! Or a vital ship is going down! Round back to the opening melody and you got your evildoers bein’ jerks again. Fuck yeah.

Exhibit B: The beginning of “The Serpentine Offering”

The orchestral part of this song only goes for 45 seconds, but I mean, come on. You thought there was an evil theme in the last one, well listen to this. What classic, militaristic villain music. Does it sound like “Imperial March” in the beginning? Well, yes it does, but the lead melody is different, so fuck it. Just imagine another villain coming onto the screen to this music. Delightful.

So, yes, let’s get these two together. There are other orchestra-only songs they have, but “Eradication Instincts Defined” is really the best example of their Star Wars-y-ness. What do you think? (I don’t know if I allow comments on this blog, if not, just as rhetorical, see the question!)

Wouldn’t this be cool? Come check cinemas in 25 years when this happens! If all goes according to plan, I’ll be able to independently produce Star Wars movies (Big D can keep all the money), and Dimmu would still be kicking around. Hmm..now I’m going to be thinking about these future Star Wars movies all day… Thank you for reading and may the force be with your unhallowed soul!