Maybe yes, a little mechanical sounding drum kicks here, but still what grabs me are the guitar riffs. I always felt that this Dimmu album was their best. I may need to hear more of their discography to further calculate an opinion, but for the moment, this is my favorite one. I like the atmosphere it bestows. It's intense and heavy plus dark, depressing, uncompromising. The guitar is to me the best feature that the album retains its forte in. Aside from the mechanical drum kicks, the rest of the music is full of darkness and despair. It's WAY better than Dimmu's latest, I mean 10-fold better.

The blast beating wrenches the eardrums and the guitar has tremolo picking frenzies varying in tempos, bar chords that are heavy plus thick, lead playing that's fairly decent, synthesizers to create a demonic sense of idealism for typical black metal mixed in with melodic riffs. That, in respect, is my favorite aspect of the album, definitely not how again the drums played out. They would've received a higher rating from me if the album didn't have that kicking or futuristic sort of sound. But for the moment, 'Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia' is still my favorite release.

Variety in the vocal department, yes, a mixture of screaming mainly overshadows the low burly tonality that is exhibited in certain parts of the songs. I would venture to say that I enjoyed all of the tracks on this release. I'll definitely have to hear more from the band, but really, their new one, just a waste. They need a comeback release and that one I was to be sure to rid myself of it. A great cast of musicians here with Galder on lead, which to me really isn't his forte. But the solos came out moderately good. I would say it's best that they had NO leads on this album yet that is my feeling anyway.

It doesn't seem like many people appreciate this band's symphonic black metal outputs. 'Stormblåst' (1996) had the highest accumulation of positive marks, my wonder would be: "why is that?" On here, you experience quality riffs that are heavy, original, creative and downright brutal. No letup here, just in certain parts, overall musical frenzy of heaviness and darkness is apparent here. I don't think that the album was appreciated by most listeners because of such poor ratings. They really had balls here and it was apparent after I heard this many times over.

If you're looking for something that's totally dark and dismal, depressing, atmospheric, original, heavy plus uncompromising, 'Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia' is where its at. Definitely top not recording with riffs that will blow your hair back. Again, Nicholas Barker's drum kicks were kind of annoying, but still the music was the highlight. Not everyone is to agree with this, I just felt it was the best constructed by the band out of their entire discography. I'd like (once again) to hear more of their discography, yet I feel that I heard the best from this one and this one only.

Rating: 9 (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Death8699
02/04/2013 00:07