The First Sellout "Black-Core" Album - "Enthrone Darkness Triumphant" Review (0%)
YES, there's a heavy bias against Dimmu Borgir. YES, it's "trendy" to hate on the band. But it's also "trendy" to defend them - not just against the exaggerated attacks, such as calling their music "the embodiment of shit" or "a monolith of feces" - but against ANY form of criticism. Just as Summoning fans have their set of "talking points" to justify the existence of their rather comical synth-led metalcore heroes, so too do Dimmu Borgir fans have their own rehearsed fantasy-based justifications as to why anyone who dislikes anything Dimmu Borgir ever released is secretly "insecure" and probably a poser.
There's a lot of "hate" against Dimmu Borgir, indeed, both on this site and elsewhere and, I'll admit, some of it is knee-jerk posturing and rather reactionary in nature, and there's even a small bit of it that is irrational, and sometimes borders on psychological projection on the part of the detractors (such as claiming they are related to Watain or are secret Neo-Nazis, etc).
The other side of the coin is that there's also a lot of "hipster praise" that this band receives, and likewise a lot of it is undeserved. In essence, hipsters saw how hated Dimmu Borgir were and, as low-intelligence contrarians, started picking apart the arguments as they attempted to find something either discrediting about the accuser - ad hominems, and often variations on the "you secretly like Mariah Carey thus your opinion on Dimmu Borgir is irrelevant" theme - or "special" and "redeeming" about one or more of the band's albums. Suddenly, Enthrone Darkness Triumphant became "influential" according to these hipsters - never mind that it never was, at all, and that it was released in 1997 anyway, well after black metal had peaked.
Influential? Enthrone Darkness Triumphant? Are we talking about the same alb- oh wait, I think I get it.
Well, I say that I "get it"... but the argument *in favour* of Dimmu Borgir ends up being an argument *against* Dimmu Borgir, once Enthrone Darkness Triumphant is recognised as influential. You sure you want to go there? Very well.
The First Sellout "Black-Core" Album
I guess in some way Enthrone Darkness Triumphant could be called "influential", by twisting definitions to no end, or rather for the sole purpose of "proving" that assertion at the expense of everything else, but even then... it wouldn't be a positive contribution, at all.
Paraphrasing another reviewer whose name I forgot, Dimmu Borgir may not have been the worst, but they were definitively among the first.
What that refers to, is that Dimmu Borgir is far from the most embarrassing example of attempting to fuse black metal aesthetics with nu-metal or mallcore music... that "achievement" goes to either said Watain, Dark Funeral, Gorgoroth, Necrophobic or Antekhrist. All suck way beyond anything Dimmu Borgir ever did, including Enthrone Darkness Triumphant.
With "the worst" clearly not being Dimmu Borgir but either one of the bands mentioned above - they are such shit that establishing a hierarchy between them is pointless - one can still ask the question: where did "the worst", whichever band from the list you choose, get the *IDEA* of combining black metal with metalcore?
Did they come up with it on their own, or was there a precedent? If there is a precedent, the earliest occurrence is likely to be Enthrone Darkness Triumphant. The only alternative would be for there to have been released, somewhere and somehow, another "blackened metalcore" album that's anterior to 1997, the year this album was released. Does it exist? My money is on "no".
That's the meaning of the saying: Dimmu Borgir - not the worst, but the first.
Enthrone Darkness Triumphant is the black metal equivalent of At the Gates' Slaughter of the Soul. Both combine black/death metal aesthetics with what is, let's be frank, the most commercial American metalcore (there's even a photoshoot of At the Gates with Black Dahlia Murder, with the Swedes wearing baseball caps from teams and cities they've likely never heard of).
And without either being "the worst" of their genres, they are nonetheless the ones that opened the floodgates.
Imagine the president of a corrupt African country facing near imminent social unrest, openly ordering the police and military to stand down and vacate the capital. Predictably, there's a carnage of looting, shooting, vandalism, etc. - no murder or terrorism, let's avoid the Rwandan comparisons to remain family friendly (like Dimmu Borgir's comically inoffensive music).
Someone is clearly to blame in this hypothetical situation. Someone must be held "accountable", right? Do you (1) blame the president who ordered the cops and military to stand down, or (2) go out of your way to find the single-person that is responsible for the MOST collateral damage, then work your way to the second most vandal-prone citizen, etc... all the way until you've established a strict hierarchy of prejudice, and ONLY THEN can you start apportioning blame?
The way you answer this hypothetical scenario reveals how you think of black metal's long, long journey into irrelevance.
Some want to blame "the worst", and go out of their way to look for "fake metal" so they can write scathing and - let's be honest - sometimes funny reviews, in a sort of "deez nuts!" grotesque yet cathartic way, that usually takes the form of "look at what THESE posers are doing... this is THE MOST REMOVED from Burzum and Darkthrone you can get... they are clearly the MOST UN-BLACK METAL band possible, and their fans are retarded for buying their act".
And others just ask, "who started this crap?" - and, as their gaze eventually lands on Dimmu Borgir and their 1997 disaster Enthrone Darkness Triumphant, they see the parallels between the rioting African city and the state of modern black metal. Who "vandalised most shops" or who "defecated the hardest on Mayhem's legacy" as questions are both as useless as they are irrelevant.
THAT is why Dimmu Borgir is hated, because they are the first sellout band, who released the first sellout "blackened metalcore" album, and you wouldn't even have heard of Watain and Antekhrist if it weren't for Shagrath and his troupe of clownish posers.
Enthrone Darkness Triumphant score: 0/100.
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