Diablo Swing Orchestra

Sing Along Songs For The Damned & Delirious

Written by: DR on 01/12/2009 16:13:27

It's very rare when a band's name actually represents their sound. You see, in 'Diablo Swing Orchestra' you have the band basically describing their influences to you. 'Swing' and 'Orchestra' are fairly self-explanatory, though 'Diablo' is more ambiguous you will sooner or later end up thinking along the lines of metal. Diablo Swing Orchestra are a somewhat romantic cocktail of all three genres, plus hints of jazz and classical, and they pull it off so well that on first listen you may laugh. Seriously. If your first thoughts when listening to this are anything like mine, they will be along the lines of "oh my fucking days, this is absolutely hilarious. Yet it's so brilliant". Don't think for a second though that these have little artistic merit whatsoever. No, they are far more than a cheap band whose sole aim to induce laughter, in fact, the laughter (after a while the laughter turns into admiration) they induce is nothing more than a symptom of their sheer weirdness, which donates substantially to their sheer awesomeness.

"Sing Along Songs For The Damned & Delirious" starts as the strangest record I've heard in... ever, and just climbs higher and higher up the 'what the fuck' scale. As you listen more and more, and you will - permitting you like great music, it soon becomes clear that this band know full well what they are doing, every operatic scream, every melodramatic vocal and pretty much every second of this album has all been careful thought out, no subtlety is too, well, subtle.

One of the main reasons this album is nothing short of awe-inspiring brilliance is the sheer diversity of it, in every department. I swear, Annlouice Loegdlund and Daniel Håkansson are blessed, not only by the range of their voices, but also by how they can completely change the style of their singing seamlessly. Take "Bedlam Sticks" as a prime example of this: it opens up with melodramatic talking like some sort of mad scientist straight out of an obscure musical, before he surges into deep, bellowed screaming; then, borderline gothic female vocals come soaring in. As if Loegdlund's and Håkansson's effortless quality and chemistry together isn't quite for you, as they back and forth in the chorus of:

Carnivore, we never could tell, NO ONE WANTS TO FEED YOU!

Carnivore, tell me what is that smell, NO ONE WANTS TO GREET YOU!

We’ll sing along and the birds will hum!

Bring the cookie, kill the cookie!

Who's the cookie, I'm the cookie!

(Even their lyrics are surreal!) some little aggressive goblin-esque creature starts shrieking in the background, oddly, to catchy effect. Remember the film "The Mask"? Well, the start to "A Tapdancer's Dilemma" sounds as though it has lost its way directly from the official soundtrack, and despite the obvious metal tendencies of the song, chances are it will endear even the moshiest of moshers to sneak in a swing dance-move in the middle of running into sweaty people really hard and fast.

Because of their unique and avant-garde style (avant-garde metal is their genre supposedly), this certainly won't be for everyone, and though they are outrageously talented (particularly that female vocalist) they'll probably never break into the 'mainstream'. The 'mainstream' are all idiots though anyway. "Sing Along Songs For The Damned & Delirious" is certainly one of the most memorable and astonishing albums of 2009, and I urge you all to listen to Diablo Swing Orchestra, and if you don't appreciate them then, well, you're wrong.

Download: A Tapdancer's Dilemma, Bedlam Sticks, Memoirs of a Roadkill
For Fans of: Stolen Babies, Unexpect, Pin-Up Went Down
Listen: Myspace

Release Date 21.09.2009
Ascendance Records

Related Items | How we score?
Comments
comments powered by Disqus

Legal

© Copyright MMXXIV Rockfreaks.net.