2026 has been a tremendous year for the black metal enthusiasts in the Twin Cities. Small shows have dotted the more diminutive venues around the cities, but the Fillmore in particular has been home to both Emperor earlier this spring and now the mighty Dimmu Borgir, who brought their Grand Serpent Rising tour to the stage this past Saturday for a night of symphonic metal madness.

The tour was meant to include support from Hypocrisy, but unfortunately Hypocrisy ran into visa troubles and had to drop off. That meant that opener Hulder had an extra long set, and what a treat that was! Hulder - comprised of Belgian-born Marliese Osborne and husband Sam Osborne (of Funebrarum fame, or infamy if you'd like) - just released a brand new album, Verbolgen. At the risk of being overly cliché-ridden, Verbolgen is by far their heaviest, darkest effort to date, streamlining the writing style into a series of second-wave-inspired aggressive black metal licks. A treat that keen metal observers this night will have noticed is that their touring lead guitarist is Minnesota's Tanner Anderson, the mastermind behind medieval black metal band Obsequiae and throwback melodic death metal band Majesties.

Their live show matched that amplified aggression - emitting huge walls of fog and skipping crowd engagement in favor of an all-aesthetics approach, Hulder launched right into a blast-beat-laden beatdown of furious riffs and monstrous growls. They opened with a track off of EP A Beacon from Darkened Skies, then worked their way across the Hulder discography. The Eternal Fanfare, Verses in Oath, and of course Verbolgen showed up during their set. Closer "...And We Shall Sing" was the perfect way to close out their set, the crescendo building at the end of the song over subtly hymned vocals closing out their dark and mysterious set with illustrious and heavy fanfare.

Dimmu Borgir has not been in Minnesota for a very long time, so to say that the crowd was excited for their return to the stage was putting it extremely mildly. The Norwegian masters of the tremolo, arguably the most famous or second most famous in the whole of the genre (competing with only Emperor), expertly took advantage of this excitement. They opened with a song from their newest album, Grand Serpent Rising. The album falls somewhere between the full-throttled fury of Enthrone Darkness Triumphant and the over-the-top symphonic elements of more recent (relatively speaking, as it's their first album since 2018's Eonian) output. That's all to say that it was the perfect way to represent who the band is in 2026 - a dramatic, powerful, symphonic and extremely heavy present. Opener "Ulvgjeld & Blodsodel" had a lush and majestic chorus to open the set to, before the demonic chords gave way to Shagrath & Co. taking the stage and pummeling the crowd with riffs that hearken back to the glory days of Immortal.

Dimmu Borgir's set from there was a hellish grab bag of material from their illustrious multi-decade career. They followed up "Ulvgjeld & Blodsodel" with Enthrone Darkness Triumphant opener "Mourning Palace", to which the audience absolutely lost their mind. The fog blasting, the blast beats firing, and the uniquely mournful melodic leads - it was black metal perfection. Black metal perfection was, as well, a perfect description for the rest of the evening. Their fanfare (they held aloft the goat skull, as is custom) and Shagrath's best-in-class vocal performance and stage charisma meant that each and every song, of which there were many, was delivered with the fury and beauty that only black metal is capable of. They played for an incredibly long time, closing down with "Progenies of the Great Apocalypse", sealing their set as a favorite for many in attendance.