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Spiritual Black Dimensions is the fourth album recorded by Dimmu Borgir. This was Dimmu Borgir's first foray into speed-laden black metal, and since much of their old material was slower and more doomy in approach, reviews of this album are mixed, giving it a serious love-hate relationship; many lauded the new direction Dimmu started going into and that it showed the band can expand their musical reach, while others criticized it for lack of originality (many of their contemporaries, such as Marduk and Dark Funeral, have a fast-as-hell approach to Black Metal) and having the keyboards, which were a prominent instrument in past recordings, buried in the mix below the guitars. This was also the first album to display the many talents of new keyboardist Mustis and the clean vocals of ICS Vortex (who would later join the band full-time). Much of the darker, faster direction could be attributed to guitarist Astennu, as the album "Mirrored Hate Painting" from his project Carpe Tenebrum, recorded before he joined Dimmu Borgir, show-cased the faster black metal style Dimmu would display on this album.
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