DIES IRAE

You remember Gollum from the "Lord of the Rings" films? That voice, my preciousssss? Well, imagine that voice singing and speaking in enthusiastic narration for over an hour to orchestration and pseudo-metal music. I understand his intent was to sound like that and he has talent but nonetheless it made for a pretty painful experience.

"Dies Irae" is certainly a unique musical experience and I want to begin with the good stuff. This is a beautiful example of musical construction venturing into many different realms and it deserves points for daring and originality. It's a mixture of rock and classical music that unfolds like a theatrical event, with dark themes and lots of spookiness. Many of the highlights for me involved the orchestrations, the strings, and the gothic soprano vocals that come and go. But the unique qualities and the nice pieces of performance cannot come close to saving this from two factors. First, the vocals as mentioned above. The music is almost never allowed to escape the wicked grip of these ludicrous Gollum vocals for the entire length of the album. Now if you are able to embrace these vocals and even enjoy them you may well have an excellent experience. I was not and it took away all of the enjoyment. Second, the music, while well constructed as mentioned, left me under whelmed and unconvinced. To be clearer I was bored silly by "Dies Irae." I respect very much the risks taken in attempting something like this and I'm glad to have heard it but it falls pretty flat. Even in the rock sections the drums and guitars sound pretty vapid and predictable. There is an album that fans of Devil Doll and dark symphonic/metal simply must hear. It attempts similar things as "Dies Irae" but is much more successful, bathing the listening in not only the splendid dark themes but also in gorgeous black melodies and much more fun. That album came out about a decade later and was called "Switch on Dark" by Antonius Rex. It remains one of my favorite discoveries of recent years.

As for Devil Doll I cannot quite call this a good album. The Japanese mini-lp sleeve edition I have is beautiful of course, a luxurious gatefold with glossy paper and cut openings with an insert of artwork. Also comes with a nice lyrics booklet. I would certainly recommend DD fans give it a shot but newbies should consider the vocal element before dropping big bucks on the import as I did.

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