Dimmu Borgir guitarist Sven “Silenoz” Kopperud has dismissed any thought of compromising his band’s artistic vision to reach bigger stages faster, arguing that heavy metal is fundamentally not designed for mainstream audiences. He made these comments in an interview with Radio Rock.
Radio Rock asked Silenoz whether he and his bandmates had ever considered softening their approach during their rise to larger venues, given how long it took both Dimmu Borgir and Behemoth to reach those stages.
Question: “It took quite a lot of time for Behemoth and also for you guys to get to the bigger stages. Has there ever been a moment where you thought ‘Maybe we should compromise a little bit?'”
“Never,” Silenoz said. “This music is not meant to be for the masses anyway. Metal in general is not. You look at Iron Maiden and Judas Priest and all the big ones, still they’re not played on mainstream radio. So I think it’s good that it is the way it is, with our kind of music and metal in general.”
He then reflected on the value of strong reactions from audiences. “Indifference. What’s the fun about that? You want people either loving you or hating you. That’s how you know that you’re doing something right. And we are here; they’re not. So, that speaks for itself.”
Kopperud’s comments came as part of a broader discussion about the place of metal music in the wider cultural landscape.
Silenoz and vocalist Stian “Shagrath” Thoresen founded Dimmu Borgir in 1993 with a commitment to uncompromising artistic vision that has lasted throughout their career. The band faced accusations of selling out from the mid-1990s onwards, yet they became one of the best-selling black metal acts in the world. Despite their massive commercial success compared to most bands in their genre, Dimmu Borgir has maintained its refusal to water down their music for wider appeal.
The band’s popularity grew through the 2000s, with albums from 2001 and 2003 establishing them as the biggest black metal band globally. Music videos for tracks like “Progenies of the Great Apocalypse” and “The Serpentine Offering” appeared regularly on MTV2, and they placed four consecutive albums on the Billboard 200. On August 3, 2012, Dimmu Borgir performed a landmark show at Wacken Open Air in Germany, playing their black metal material alongside the Czech National Symphony Orchestra to 75,000 people.
Dimmu Borgir released their new album “Grand Serpent Rising” on May 22, 2026, via Nuclear Blast Records, eight years after the critically acclaimed “Eonian”. The album marked the first Dimmu Borgir record since 1999’s “Spiritual Black Dimensions” to not feature guitarist Galder, who stepped down in 2024. To support the release, the band embarked on a European co-headlining tour with Behemoth and Dark Funeral as support.
Throughout their history, Dimmu Borgir’s founders have chosen the slower, harder path rather than expedient shortcuts. Silenoz explained that taking time between albums matters because they could have rushed out sequels to past work, but that would have been abandoning their principles. This commitment to not taking the easy way out has defined Dimmu Borgir’s place in metal music and shaped their response to every opportunity to compromise their artistic approach.
