NIGHTWORK

Drawing on influences as diverse as King Diamond and Emperor, Diabolical Masquerade is a band I'd highly recommend to any serious prog-metal lover.

The use of odd time signatures, symphonic keyboard arrangements and a wide variety of outlandish avant-garde musical influences make "Nightwork" a rather interesting listen. The music here is a shifting landscape of genres, from orchestral black metal to old-school heavy metal, with plenty of room for trips into very strange musical madness. At times one will find harpsichords and glockenspiels interlacing melodic counterparts over more traditional palm-muted guitar work. The melodies here are immensely complex and unnerving in their avant-garde bombast, at times amusing in their complete freshness.

Guitars and keyboards are the driving force behind this album, all mixed with precision to create a landscape of absolute strangeness that doesn't cease to amaze the listener.

Highly recommended.

A solid symphonic black metal release from the Diabolical Masquerade side project, Nightwork succeeds in part because of what it isn't trying to do; presenting a brief, compact running time rather than the bloated discs often resorted to by symphonic metal bands means that the over- the-top orchestration of the album doesn't outstay its welcome. Veering deliriously between more traditional black metal sections and more symphonic moments, the album lures you in with accessible melodic black metal before slipping in a range of curious tangents that are easy to miss if the album isn't given your full attention. One that calls for repeated listens, in short, though at points it does feel a little vapid and show-offy.

DIABOLICAL MASQUERADE is the solo project of Anders Nystrom (aka Blakkheim), known for his work as the guitarist of Katatonia. Although he is often cited as the sole performer on this side project he in fact had help from a few friends. Most notably Dan Swano from Edge of Sanity plays drums and other percussion, additional keyboards, backing vocals and is the the co-producer. Blakkheim handles the vocals, guitars, bass and keyboards. Others handle the cello and flute.

This album takes you on a stroll through the entire metal universe as it is based in old school black metal with the deranged monster vocals but much of the album also has symphonic embellishments. There are thrash metal leanings with galloping riffs, groove metal sections, traditional metal acoustic arpeggios and soloing and progressive time signatures with tons of keyboards and strange inserted extras including spoken words sounding like they are from Satan himself.

The ghostly atmospheric backings give this a really disquieting effect. The sound effects add strangeness such as a scratchy old record lp effect on 'The Zkeleton Keyz To The Dead' or avant-garde vocalizations that pop out of nowhere every so often. The formula does remind a bit of Mr Bungle or Sigh in that the styles play for a while and then shift suddenly, however, DM has a smaller palette than the aforementioned groups tending to stick to using the metal genres with only meager sprinklings of non-metal influences which places this firmly in metal territory but because these metal subgenres are usually not sewn together in such a way, also gives this album a uniqueness that I have not heard anywhere else. Cool stuff.