The last live report I wrote for The MetalList was back in 2008, and funnily enough it was also for a DIMMU BORGIR show in San Francisco, at this same venue, The Warfield. That one was called Blackest Of The Black, and the Norwegians were somewhere in the middle of a stack of bands, going on before DANZIG, with MOONSPELL and two more underneath them. This time the list of bands was much smaller. Just HULDER and DIMMU BORGIR. HULDER is the project of a Belgian musician who moved to the Pacific Northwest years ago, a really good black metal act, and she had put out a new album only a couple of weeks before this show, in August 2026. HYPOCRISY were supposed to join the two of them for the tour but were not able to get their visas, so they never made it to North America at all. SUFFOCATION were on the original tour announcement as well, although they only did the eastern dates and were never part of the San Francisco bill. Five bands in 2008 and two in 2026, then, for a ticket that cost me twice as much.
Earlier this year DIMMU BORGIR released "Grand Serpent Rising", their first album in eight years, and we have a review of it on our site, which I wrote myself and scored 7.5 out of 10. I still think that is about right. There are real highlights on it, but thirteen tracks over an hour is more than the material can carry, the back half of the record starts to blur together, and "Ulvgjeld & Blodsodel" was in my opinion an unconvincing song to promote the whole thing with. So, far from their strongest album, and I still wanted very much to see them live again. Partly because of what happened last year, when I was in Norway for a short vacation and did not plan it well enough at all. On the very day I landed in Oslo, 27 June 2025, DIMMU BORGIR were playing Tons Of Rock at Ekebergsletta, and later that same evening I kept passing people walking around the city in fresh DIMMU BORGIR shirts from that show. So when the presale for this tour opened I bought immediately, fifty dollars for the ticket, and with the fees on top the total came to $66.63.
On Friday, 21 August 2026, I drove up from work in Mountain View to San Francisco. There was a bit of traffic but I made it into the city in good time, and a short walk along Market Street took me back to The Warfield. In 2008 I came in on BART from Berkeley and had to leave before DANZIG finished because the last train was at 12:22, so driving at least removed that particular problem, and replaced it with parking. The building itself has not changed. The fresco on the ceiling and the red and gold still make you think for a second that you have walked into a theater rather than a black metal show. I think the last time I was in here was years ago, December 2014, when IN FLAMES and OPETH performed together.
The first thing I saw once I was inside was a long line towards the DIMMU BORGIR merch stand. The HULDER stand was a little bit further along and had no line at all, which tells you plainly enough who most of the room had come for. I joined the DIMMU queue, because I wanted to own one of their shirts again. I used to have one a long time ago, the cover of "Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia", and I wore it to university constantly in my youth years. I had done a bit of recon on the internet beforehand to see what merch they brought on this tour, so I already knew what I was after, and I went with their old logo patch and a shirt with the cover of "Spiritual Black Dimensions" on the front and the schedule of this tour printed on the back. I bought that album on tape a long time ago, also when I was at university, and I still think it is one of their best.
Prices, of course, have gone up significantly since 2008. This time I paid forty dollars for the shirt, fifteen for the patch and around twenty dollars for a beer. In my old report from this venue I complained that beer was six or seven dollars for a third or half a liter and called it robbery, and tour shirts that night were twenty dollars each, so beer has roughly tripled and shirts have doubled while the ticket went from thirty-three dollars to sixty-six. They also had the new album on vinyl at the table, signed, which would set you back sixty dollars, and the guy working the stand asked me whether I wanted that one too. I already have it, though, the limited deluxe book edition with the 2LP and the CD, the one that sold out a long time ago.
HULDER setlist:
- A Beacon From Darkened Skies (single, 2025)
- View From Nemeton ("Verbolgen", 2026)
- Sylvan Awakening ("The Eternal Fanfare", 2022)
- Verses In Oath ("Verses In Oath", 2024)
- Vessel Of Suffering ("Verses In Oath", 2024)
- Drie Raven ("Verbolgen", 2026)
- …And We Shall Sing ("Verbolgen", 2026)
HULDER took the stage exactly at 7:30 PM and it was a very strong performance, seven songs across forty minutes, which is a real opening slot rather than the token twenty minutes support bands usually get handed on a package tour. In the back hung a huge banner with the HULDER logo, and she stood in the middle of the stage with a microphone stand wrapped in tree branches, wearing very light corpse paint, nothing overdone. The frontwoman did not say a single word between the songs, not one, and the only phrase we heard from her all night was "thank you, San Francisco" at the very end of the set. It cost her nothing at all, because the band sound was really great and powerful and the crowd embraced her, and I think a lot of people in that room were already familiar with the band and with this sound. Worth noting what she left out, too: three of the seven songs came from "Verbolgen", which had only been out two weeks, two from "Verses In Oath" and one from the "The Eternal Fanfare" mini-LP, with last year's standalone single opening the set, which means nothing whatsoever from "Godslastering: Hymns Of A Forlorn Peasantry", the 2021 debut that made her name and that most of the people who came for her would have found her through. That is either confidence or stubbornness and either way I respect it.
DIMMU BORGIR setlist:
- Ulvgjeld & Blodsodel ("Grand Serpent Rising", 2026)
- Mourning Palace ("Enthrone Darkness Triumphant", 1997)
- Kings Of The Carnival Creation ("Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia", 2001)
- Council Of Wolves And Snakes ("Eonian", 2018)
- As Seen In The Unseen ("Grand Serpent Rising", 2026)
- Ascent ("Grand Serpent Rising", 2026)
- Stormblåst ("Stormblåst", 1996)
- Reptile ("Spiritual Black Dimensions", 1999)
- The Insight And The Catharsis ("Spiritual Black Dimensions", 1999)
- The Serpentine Offering ("In Sorte Diaboli", 2007)
- Puritania ("Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia", 2001)
- Gateways ("Abrahadabra", 2010)
- Progenies Of The Great Apocalypse ("Death Cult Armageddon", 2003)
- Perfection Or Vanity ("Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia", 2001) — outro, from tape
DIMMU BORGIR took the stage almost an hour after HULDER finished. In the background was a giant banner with the cover of the latest album, and in the middle of the stage the drum kit sat slightly raised above everything else. It was a long and very good set. Corpse paint, costumes, fog and lights were all there, but not over the top the way BEHEMOTH do it, which is at least consistent with the album, since I called that restrained in my review as well. The sound was good and everything was audible, guitars, keys and vocals all sitting where they should, which for this band live is not something to take for granted. Shagrath talked to the crowd, including about how long it had been since they last visited San Francisco, and he was not exaggerating in the slightest, because their previous show in this city was at The Regency Ballroom on 28 November 2010, fifteen years and nine months earlier, and this whole run was their first North American tour in eight years. That is probably what the merch line and the packed floor were really about. Pretty much every DIMMU song was accompanied by a moshpit, the area under the stage was packed from the first note to the last, and Silenoz spent the whole show sporting the same beret he wears in all the videos and pictures for the new album. They only played three new songs, which is generous for a band with a record to sell, and what struck me instead was how much of this set I had already seen in this same building. Of the nine DIMMU BORGIR songs I wrote down in 2008, six came back on Friday night: "Mourning Palace", "Kings Of The Carnival Creation", "Reptile", "The Serpentine Offering", "Puritania" and "Progenies Of The Great Apocalypse". Two thirds of that old set is still standing eighteen years later.
The one real disappointment was ICS Vortex, or rather his absence. The last time I saw this band he was still in it and sang the clean parts on the famous songs, and I singled him out for exactly that in my old report, without knowing at the time that I was watching one of his last runs, since he and Mustis were out of the band by September 2009. This time the clean vocals came off a backing track, and on "Reptile" Shagrath sang those parts himself with screaming. It works well enough and the band are professionals about it, but for me it was sad not to see and hear Vortex do them, because those lines are not decoration on "Spiritual Black Dimensions", they are a large part of why that album sounds the way it does. And it is not as though it could never happen, since Vortex, Mustis and Tjodalv all joined DIMMU BORGIR on stage at Inferno Festival back in 2024, so this is a touring decision rather than a permanent wall. I bought the "Spiritual Black Dimensions" shirt on the way in and then heard those vocals come out of a tape a couple of hours later, which is more or less the honest summary of my evening.
There was no encore. After "Progenies Of The Great Apocalypse" they went straight into "Perfection Or Vanity", the instrumental outro of "Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia", played from tape, and that was the night. I did not mind that at all, because that outro closes the album whose cover was on the very first DIMMU BORGIR shirt I ever owned, and I walked out of The Warfield to it carrying a bag with a shirt of the album I bought on tape in those same years. DIMMU BORGIR put out a great show, a long set with enough old time bangers in it, big professionals on stage, good sound and a room that did not stop moving all night. My only real complaint is the one I cannot do anything about, which is that I wish ICS Vortex were still with the band to deliver his clean vocals himself instead of a backing track. Fifteen years and nine months between San Francisco shows, and I hope the next gap is a shorter one, although on this band's record I would not bet the price of a ticket on it.
