Right of the bat, I have to mention that I'm not a big fan of Dimmu Borgir. To be precise, I do enjoy some of their material, but find their body of work, from a broader perspective, to be kind of underwhelming, but not without potential or glimpses of brilliance. They have an uneven discography, but they had good ideas, good moments, but lacked consistency, IMHO, so I can't really consider them to be a band I really enjoy much.
The reason why I wanted to discuss their 1997 to 2003 stretch specifically, is because I tend to think of it as the period where they might have been the most interesting, somewhat original and more consistent. I excluded Stormblåst on purpose, as I never really got the hype surrounding it, and IMHO, it didn't really hold a candle to the other albums released at the time in the "symphonic black metal" trend. It's not a terrible album, per se, but comparing it to In The Nightside Eclipse or Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk, I don't really think of it as a great album. For all tid, I excluded because it's as generic as symphonic black metal can get.
The stretch Enthrone Darkness Triumphant - Spiritual Black Dimensions - Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia - Death Cult Armageddon, while it is not exactly fantastic, shows a bit more potential, something much more interesting, and even has glimpses of greatness. Enthrone Darkness Triumphant, more specifically, is probably their best album overall in my opinion, and it gives me vibes of Emperor mixed with Arcturus, but with the distinctiveness of Dimmu. While they kind of attempted to do that style of symphonic avant-gard(ish) black metal later in their discography, they always fell short and ended up sounding like a weaker Arcturus. And yeah, Dimmu Borgir is a band I can't help but to constently compare with Arcturus for many reasons. For starters, because Hellhammer and ICS Vortex were in both bands at some point, and also because, well, they sound similar in many ways. But Arcturus is, IMHO, the far better band here. They mastered the whole avant-garde black metal style very early on. I was revisiting La Masquerade Infernale the other day, and I was still amazed by the fact that this masterpiece came out as early as 1997. Anyway, back to Dimmu Borgir, I think that Enthrone Darkness Triumphant is their best, and while SBD and PEM are not as solid, they kind of further explore that sound, maybe with diminishing returns, but with still enough quality for these albums to be worth revisiting from time to time.
I included Death Cult Armageddon in this, not so much because it's amazing or anything, but because there is something very unique, experiemental (in a way) and out there, especially for the time. Having DB play write and record an entire album with an orchestra, made for a completely different "black metal" experience. I don't want to debate whether it's actual black metal or not. I really don't care much about that discussion in the context of this thread, but I want to include it in the discussion because I feel it to have been born out of an authentic attempt to make something different and unique. Is it commercial and sellout? Well, maybe, but I still find it interesting.
From Stormblåst MMV (in 2005) and onward, I feel like they started to lose speed significantly. They retained their distinctive Dimmu Borgir sound, but they never really came up with anything that did a lasting impression, at least for me. Hence the fact that I excluded them from my post.
So yeah, after this long OP, I would like to know what others think of the 1997-2003 run of Dimmu Borgir, if I'm right or wrong about these albums, if I'm right or wrong to include or exclude one or many albums from their "good stretch" or if my idea of a good stretch is wrong altogether. Basically, I want to know what others think about these albums and their quality.
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It does mostly the same thing but with less of the generic "horror musical" tone palette and more of its own characteristic sound, something I feel like Dimmu lacks from EDT onwards.