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Artist: Diablo Swing Orchestra |
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I’ve been doing this review thing for some time and I never thought the words Electro Swing, Jazz Fusion, Operatic Vocal and Metal would be combined to describe a band or its music, but along comes Diablo Swing Orchestra and the rule book is thrown right out of the window. This sextet have created quite a stir with their 'The Butchers Ballroom' opus and have built quite a following for their melting pot of styles and ground breaking album. And now in 2009 the band return with their second album aptly titled ‘Sing Along Songs For The Damned & Delirious', again mixing 30’s swing with traditional guitar orientated metal, with the operatic vocals of front woman Annlouice Wolgers and just a touch of Electro Jazz fusion. The album opens up with ‘The Tapdancers Dilemma’, a straight up 30’s swing number with a metal edge that could easily have been written for the sound track of the Jim Carey movie 'The Mask'. You can just imagine the wolf sitting in the smoke filled jazz lounge peering over his drink as his eyes pop out of his head. Wolgers shows what a powerful Operatic vocal she has on ‘A Rancid Romance’, this one has a tango meets Apocalyptica feel. Heavy cello’s provided by Johannes Bergion and violins partying with Latino brass sections, all the while the metal guitars trying to keep up with the darkest of Operatic overtures. The album goes from weird to down right bizarre with ‘Lucy Fears The Morning Star’, a real thumper of a track again featuring heavy cellos, on this peter and the wolf styled number. ‘Bedlam Sticks’ is one for the Tim Burton film fans, think ‘Nightmare Before Christmas’ meets ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’. The album I
must admit isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea but I expect the
band don’t really care because the infectious fun continues with
‘New World Widows’, the um-pa-pa filled ‘Siberian Love Affairs’
leading nicely into a couple of my favourite ‘Vodka Inferno’, which
is full of Romany charm and really funky bass and viola parts, before
getting all funky Country and Western with ‘Memoirs Of A Roadkill’. It's all guns blazing with ‘Ricerca Dell ‘Anima’, a real blast of metal and opera that is just out of this world. This quite unique album is rounded off in true Diablo style with the instrumental ‘Stratosphere Serenade’, again the gypsy fiddle intertwines with the traditional guitar and those tremendous heavy cello’s. Like I said
at the beginning, this is a real diverse album that you will either hate
or love, but either way you must listen this album more than once to
fully appreciate what the band are doing. In a world where being
unique is becoming more and more of an asset, then this band will become
the World Bankers of the music world. |
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Tracklisting: 01.
A Tapdancer's Dilemma
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All content copyright of The Mayfair Mall Zine unless otherwise stated. |
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