In 2004, Dimmu Borgir guitarist Silenoz sat in a Texas cinema. As the lights dimmed and the movie previews started to show, one of them hit a little different. Accompanying the trailer for director Guillermo del Toro’s new Hellboy film came the unmistakable orchestral blasts of Progenies Of The Great Apocalypse, from Dimmu’s extravagant new album, Death Cult Armageddon, released in September the previous year.
Just a decade before, the members of Dimmu Borgir were teenagers being indoctrinated into the radical new sounds of Norwegian black metal through obscure records purchased at the Helvete record store in Oslo, run by Mayhem mastermind Euronymous. Now, through them, black metal had broken Hollywood.
