Yeah. I had a quick read after this post. Vortex is on record saying that Mustis had a massive input into the creative process, and it seems his absence has had a negative impact on the more recent records the band has put out. You may well be right about Vortex too. You can't be the only person attracted by Vortex's vocals, and if Mustis did a lot of the work creatively, regardless of him being properly credited or not, that's a massive hole to fill. Dimmu decided to be smart about it and not replace them at all.

ICS Vortex definitely has his fans, for sure. I met a few guys who were into mostly popular and accessible metal, and was surprised that they knew Arcturus, and the reason was that they loved ICS Vortex with Dimmu Borgir and they just kind of kept digging into all the projects he was involved with.

He's a great musician, and his vocal style really stands out in a positive way with Dimmu, even if he didn't sing often or on every song. His contributions always stood out to me. Like, I'm not a fan of Death Cult Armageddon, but his lines on Progrenies of the Great Apocalypse are awesome, and I remember it making a good impression on 17 years old me.

I love many tracks on Enthrone Darkness Triumphant and think it's one of their best efforts, but Spiritual Black Dimensions is where they really peaked, for me. It strikes this interesting production quality of being a bit muddy, but also elegant. It's a thick atmosphere, if you will. They became overly polished from Puritanical onward and lost some of that balance for me. As Dimmu was one of my "gateway" black metal bands, I would call myself a fan but I'm not blind to the fact that a lot of their post Spiritual Black Dimensions output can be quite generic.

As for Vortex, I would definitely argue that his presence in the band helped gain them quite a bit of notoriety, particular on "Progenies of the Great Apocalypse." That was the release I recall as being one of, if not their biggest "breakout" moment(s) and I would argue a large reason for that is that epic bit at the bridge where Vortex really shines. It's such a massive juxtaposition of cinematic quality clean vocals set against a metal background and while its certainly not something Dimmu innovated, it worked perfectly and was captivating enough to really get people's attention. I could be over-estimating how big the song really was since I was around 13 at the time and really only had my circle of friends as a barometer, but that's my recollection anyway.

I'll fully admit that I checked out both Borknagar and Arcturus because of ICS Vortex's time in those bands. Still love "The Archaic Course" and "Sideshow Symphonies" quite a bit. The dude's got a powerful voice. Dimmu Borgir's popularity definitely helped lift those bands up too (and that's a good thing - Arcturus and Borknagar are great, with or without ICS Vortex).

Well, Progenies of the Great Apocalypse was in the soundtrack of the first Hellboy movie in 2004. This is about as big as it gets for an extreme metal band in terms of exposure in the mainstream.

Even if I'm not quite as fond of Death Cult Armageddon as I was as a teenager, it was still a gateway into heavier stuff for me, and it introduced me to the band. I still prefer Enthrone Darkness Triumphant over Spiritual Black Dimensions, but they are my favorite records by them, and I agree with what you said about SBD having "interesting production quality of being a bit muddy, but also elegant." It's quite on point.



I personnally discovered these two bands because I loved Ulver, and wanted to explore more projects that involved Garm. I love Garm's vocals and it does disapoint me that he left Arcturus, as they are one of my all time favorite bands (La Masquerade Infernale, and The Sham Mirrors are masterpieces) but Vortex is just about the best replacement you could find. Arcturian is one of the albums of Arcturus I listen to the most, and Vortex really shines as a lead vocalist on it.

In retrospect, their material was not that substantial, even when compared to CoF's classic era, which I revisit frequently.

Shagrath's vocal performance in Enthrone was incredible, but I get the feeling that constant touring and the rockstar lifestyle blew up his voice, he sounded absolutely shot by the time Puritanical was released. That and the horrendous overproduction (the triggered kick drums sounded atrocious even back then) prevented me from getting into those later albums.

The songwriting is all over the place, and it consisted of a mishmash of Galder's riffs (easily the best thing about Dimmu Borgir, and I'd much rather listen to Old Man's Child), the synth sections and the other random pompous bullshit they crammed into their songs. It was ridiculously overblown yet somehow very accessible. The comparisons to a hamburger are spot-on, which makes the Demon Burger nickname even more accurate.

I think it's his best performance on an album so far. Those vocal lines on Crashland... just thinking about them gives me shivers.

These are the best demonstrations of his voice in my opinion, from Arcturus and Borknagar.
Arcturus: The Chaos Path, Hufsa, Crashland
Borknagar: Winter Millennium, Colossus, True North

Weirdly, I have not yet listened to his solo album.
I need to fix that.

I thank Dimmu Borgir and their fans for giving me good opportunity to buy cheap traditional metal records nobody wanted back then.
Also it was nice to hate the norsecore goths. Their music, not for me. "Symphonic" Black Metal like 2 first Emperor full lenghts, always for me.
Now the new wave of whatever vinyl metal fans give me good opportunity to buy cheap traditional metal CDs. And hating the hipsters feels even better.

SBD was my entry point for the band and the only Other physical releases i own are EDT and PEM.

SBD is still what i return too if i want some Dimmu Borgir, i feel Astennu's contributions added a bit too the band.

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This era is special to me, Death Cult Armageddon was the second black metal album I ever bought when I just started discovering the genre. They do some really awesome stuff across the four albums here, getting Mustis really took their orchestral arrangements to a new level and they're suffering without him. And Vortex kills it every time he has a section, just brilliant (side note: I only saw them live on the Abrahadabra tour and replacing his bits with a choir backing track was fucking weak.) I'd include the Stormblåst rerecording and In Sorte Diaboli with these as their absolute golden era, those albums are great too! Shame they've only released two albums in the 16 years since, especially since Abrahadabra was and is such a let down.

Here I am dredging up another one....not that old I guess. I'm obviously a fan of Dimmu too. A lot of pretty good points were made already. I basically really like symphonic metal and the live stuff they've done with symphony's is awesome (to me) and not done often. Septicflesh is another band I know that has had an entire symphonic accompaniment which is so rad.
In that vain: Carach Angren is another band that incorporates symphonic sounds very well and at times has reminded me of Bond theme type stuff.
If anyone else wants to recommend more nice symphonic metal I'm all ears.