Diabolical Masquerade: Nightwork (1998)

Diabolical Masquerade is the one-man project of Anders Nyström, aka Blakkheim, who was one of the founding members of the gloomy Katatonia as well as Swedish death supergroup Bloodbath.  Diabolical Masquerade is a much more ambitious project, one in which Blakkheim has really been able to spread his creative wings. 

I have previously heard Diabolical Masquerade's Death's Design album, the last of the band's releases to date.  That album was extremely odd.  For one, there was the fact that there were 61 tracks on the album, for a 43 minute long album, but the tracks come together to form one epic song, telling a story similar to the storyline of the Final Destination movies, death stalking people and all.  So it was definitely an intriguing release.  Despite that, I never managed to get any more of the band's releases.

This album is much more straightforward than Death's Design, though that is not to say it is anything close to a standard black metal album.  It is a keyboard-heavy, melodic black metal release.  The keyboard sections have a decidedly gothic flourish to them, combining with the dark atmosphere and ghastly vocals to create a very eerie and spooky-sounding album.  There are occasional spoken word interludes, snippets of a conversation between a woman speaking to a deity she initially thinks is God.  It responds by saying "Do I look like God to you?" 

Next to Death's Design, this is a downright normal album.  But it is still significantly different than most of the rest of the black metal scene by comparison.  Blakkheim masterfully evokes a dark and foreboding atmosphere throughout the album, yet writes some insanely catchy riffs at the same time.  What results is an avante garde take on black metal that captures attention and never lets go.  It tells a story much like the other Diabolical Masquerade album I have heard, but in more of a traditional way.  I think I actually prefer this one to Death's Design, though for much different reasons.

FMA Reviews: Azure Emote: The Gravity of Impermanence

Originally reviewed here.

What a weird album. I am not even really sure how to classify this band. I suppose the best way would be to compare them to a group like Hollenthon, Septicflesh, Sigh, or the oddball projects of Dan Swanö. In other words, they seem to have influences from a wide variety of metal styles, such as black, death, and industrial. Never has the term avant-garde been more fitting than when listening to this album from Azure Emote.

This is Azure Emote's second album and it has gained them a fair amount of interest. I have been in a little bit of a metal black hole in the last few months due to an extremely busy work schedule and even I have heard some hype about this release. Azure Emote is the new band of former Monstrosity frontman Mike Hrubovcak. But it definitely does not follow in the footsteps of Monstrosity. Monstrosity was a fairly paint-by-numbers death metal band. As previously stated, this is anything but formulaic. The songs do not follow any traditional song structure and the music is widely varied, crushing and intense one minute, slow and dissonant the next, and allows with a number of sonic surprises.

Azure Emote is at their best when they are pushing the boundaries of extreme metal. Utilizing synthesizers, strings, saxophones, and all kinds of other weird and eclectic instrumentation (harmonica, really?), Azure Emote never settle on anything that can be considered traditional metal structure and instrumentation. These moments are frequent and lend a schizophrenic feel to the overall listening experience. There are still obvious metal riffs, but those seem somewhat lackluster when not accompanied by some off-the-wall instrument or sample.

The only real complaint I have about this album is that the band sometimes does too much. There is a lack of cohesion to a lot of the moments and the whole thing feels like a collection of disparate parts rather than one impressive whole. It can be a little off-putting at times.

Azure Emote is certainly unpredictable and have a lot of talent, but at times they just appear to be weird for weirdness's sake. That can be problematic and often prevents any real connection with the listener.