What's a "Dimmu Borgir"?

I've always liked metal music, starting from the very earliest days when Black Sabbath first started to define what metal was. This strikes some people as odd. Once I was wearing a white belt (I don't remember why) and my sister exclaimed "You can't like metal if you wear a white belt!"

The mistake most people make is assuming that everyone who likes metal wears black, spikes their hair, and either mopes around in an unbreakable melancholy or aggressively strikes out against the world. One can just as easily be a professional who wears Norm Abrams-style flannel shirts and be a fan of metal. Let's not buy into the stereotype here, please.

I just like the way it sounds. The rhythms and sounds are what appeal to me, not some manufactured "metal worldview". Besides, the vocals of most of the metal I listen to are absolutely indecipherable without a lyric sheet, and sometimes not even then. Case in point: "Corporal Jigsore's Quandary" by Carcass. I have no idea what the guy is saying, and I don't care; I just like the way the song sounds. (And to be honest, when you do figure out the words, they are almost always silly anyway.)

One of my co-workers is a 90-pound woman from Singapore. I let her listen to the song "Sickening Art" by Dismember on my iPod, and she actually screamed when it started. So do I, but not in the same way.

Not surprisingly, there are dozens of metal genres these days, many of which I don't really care for. Here are some genres I don't much like:

Industrial (Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails)
Metalcore (Hatebreed)
Nu-Metal (Slipknot)
Euro Speed Metal (Yngwie Malmsteen)
Grindcore (pick one)
Goth Metal
Gothic Metal (not the same thing as Goth Metal at all)
Hair Metal (Poison, Whitesnake)
Pseudo-Metal (Quiet Riot)

Here are some metal genres I do like:

Melodic Death Metal (Dark Tranquility)
Sunnyside Death Metal (Carcass, Dismember, Entombed)
Viking Metal (Enslaved)
Norwegian Weird Black Metal (Burzum)*
Thrash (Metallica, Sepultura)
American Speed Metal (Racer X)
American Blackish-Thrashish Metal (Slayer)
Norwegian Not-So-Weird Black Metal (Cradle of Filth, Dimmu Borgir)
British Metal (Iron Maiden)
Doom Metal (Black Sabbath)
Doomdeath Metal (Fall of Empyrean)
Power Metal (Saxon, Manowar, Bolt Thrower)

So what is a Dimmu Borgir, other than a Norwegian symphonic black metal band that seems to be consciously trying to out-do Cradle of Filth? I ask you, Morton Kondrake!

*Some bands are tough to defend, even in academic terms. Burzum, for example, has a murder conviction on its discography, and most of Dismember's output is pretty unsettling if you listen to the words. So don't listen to the words!