Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia - Dimmu Borgir

Breaking into the big-time around the same time Cradle of Filth made symphonic black metal popular with mainstream metal fans, this album is naturally a target of hatred for the community of metal nerds. While it's certainly a disappointment compared to the high quality of their earlier melodic black metal releases, it's a vast improvement over the frankly unlistenable 'Spiritual Black Dimensions.' The songs at least stand out here individually, even though the old problems still remain. Keyboard player Mustis is still granted too much dominance and fails to back it up with talent or creativity, and the addition of drummer Nicholas Barker (ex-Cradle of Filth) ...  Read the complete review