Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia

Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia is the fifth studio album by Norwegian symphonic black metal band Dimmu Borgir. It was released by Nuclear Blast Records in 2001.

This album showed a radical departure from previous Dimmu Borgir albums. The usage of an actual orchestra versus traditional keyboards gives the album a much more theatrical approach. Also, the guitars became much more up-front on this album than before. Keyboard and orchestral lines were more sparse than on Enthrone Darkness Triumphant and Spiritual Black Dimensions, and even experimental song-writing was seen on tracks like “Puritania” (which sounds more industrial than black metal) which is also featured in the CKY (video series).

The lyrics also masked much of the band’s overt Satanism and anti-Christian views much more than on previous albums, which, according to Silenoz, was meant to have people think and interpret the lyrics and moods for themselves, though the artwork and over-all delivery still marks the band as purely anti-Christian. In the song “Hybrid Stigmata” the line: Demons to some, Angels to others, is from the movie Hellraiser.

This is also the first album to mark the introduction of drummer Nicholas Barker as well as ICS Vortex as a full-time member. Shagrath uses clean singing on “Architecture of a Genocidal Nature”.