Dimmu Borgir - Black Metal

Even as someone who tolerates Satyricon, I'm completely apathetic towards whatever era of Dimmu Borgir is touted as the 'highlight' of their career, as to me it all sounds like mallcore with more or less synthetisers. Melodramatic and over-hyped, Dimmu Borgir epitomises the saying 'style over substance', as under the layers of synth leads, heavy distortion and furious blast beats - courtesy of Hellhammer from Mayhem - there is nothing remotely black metal in Dimmu Borgir's discography, just more of the same goth rock with harsh vocals that has come to define the completely factitious 'blackened emo' sound popular amongst the Hot Topic crowd.

Mainstream audience excluded, Dimmu Borgir carved out a very small but dedicated niche during their career, but for the life of me I can't understand why a black metal fan would find enjoyment in their music. The band's haphazard and ultimately pointless mixture of metalcore, goth rock, screamo, symphonic metal and crunkcore isn't just pointless, but barely listenable and more an exercise in masochism than anything else. I enjoy a bit of experimental, avant-garde, symphonic and seemingly improvised black metal material, but this band just seems stupid and useless, managing to add absolutely nothing to a genre in which the band barely belongs in the first place.

It's entirely possible that I'm just missing some huge element of this band's music, but I've tried looking at it like 'normal', non-metal music, I've tried looking at it as black metal, as death metal, I've even tried looking at it as being sort of endearingly incompetent and sloppy rehearsal, but I can't find any charm to this stuff at all. Dimmu Borgir is just radio rock for people too ashamed to admit they like listening to radio rock.