Devil Doll - DIES IRAE
Welcome gloomy and disturbing...
Devil Doll is an Italian-Slovenian rock band founded in 1987, headed by a brilliant composer and singer hiding under the enigmatic pseudonym of Mr. Doctor.
Despite their not very high popularity, this group attracted a lot of very devoted fans. I known Devil Doll through the archival recordings of the broadcasts of Tomasz Beksiński already a few years ago and I must admit that after the first hearing I appreciated the extraordinary depth and beauty of their music.
The album that I wanted to introduce you is DIES IRAE, the last album of the band, which is at the same time an opus magnum of their work. It consists of one 46-minute suite, divided into 16 elements, full of mysterious content, symbols, as well as unusual instrumental performances of a horrifying instrumental section and vocal performances of Mr.Doctor.
On this album, we can hear not only instruments typically associated with rock, such as drums or electric guitars, but also the entire Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra and classical piano.
So let's not extend it any longer, all fans of darkness, horror and dreadful cemetery opera are welcome today with open arms. You are welcome to experience this exceptional and unique work. (Link to record)
From a sound engineer viewpoint DIES IRAE is undoubtedly my proudest achievement ever. As a producer my opinion is that it is a sublime work of pure poetry and timeless musical genius played by truly fantastic musicians with a unique, outstanding vocalist (not just singer, as Mr. Doctor uses the Voice as the most expressive of the instruments). DIES IRAE has so many brilliant ideas that anybody else would have diluted using them to make three or four albums! I honestly think that the greatness of what DEVIL DOLL have done in music will be fully recognized only in ten, maybe twenty years. And I am honoured to have been chosen as sound engineer and co- producer by one of the very few outstanding personalities in the world of Art. If I am allowed to give a last little advice to anybody approaching the universe of DEVIL DOLL: let it to be the soundtrack to the free floating of your thoughts. Let it be the contagious catalyst of your creativeness. Close your eyes, reverse them to the inside and fly into your own imagination.
(Juri Tony - sound engineer and producer responsible for the album)
PRELUDIUM
In the first moments of our musical journey through the horrifying, twisted world of Devil Doll, we are greeted by the horrible sounds of the violin, at equal intervals interrupted by the gloomy and violent attacks of a violently thundering cello. The proportion of massive sounds is gradually increasing, while the violin slowly seems to be cutting the reality with its cold, soulless sound, like the blades stained with blood.
When their mad cries start to become torture for us, they decide to give way so that we can hear the sounds of the piano Sheol slowly coming out of nothingness, as if enveloped in the fog. Soon, both altoes, bassoons join his game, and the string section joins the game. Soon there will be another explosion - a drum, a guitar - a slow, brutal metal slaughter!
Again, the silence... The stage is surrounded by clouds of smoke, the omnipresent smell of sulphur, the sounds of pianos disappearing in the dark...
The woman behind this wonderful voice, which we will hear many more times, was a young Croatian singer, Norina Radovan.
Stringed instruments build tension, the atmosphere thickens, do you feel shivers? Now HE is entering the stage, with the gloomy pace of his voice, he sings the first phrases of his horrible, intimate song.
To See A Play of Hopes And Fears.
The hair is blown on the head, the eyes are covered in darkness, the next sounds are attacking unexpectedly, and this is only the beginning of the show, the audience is still warm...
Toss About The Scene
Held Up By Threads
Sinking In The Deep!
Ritual started. The musical orgy of wood and steel resounds with great force, accelerates, cuts, crushes and chaffs! Devil Doll does not take prisoners, the dark opera flows with blood, and the hosts of devils of the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra in the sabbath of group murder spit out the brightest sounds from their instruments from the whole range available to them.
Let this nightmare continue!
DELIRIUM
Mr. Doctor returns to the stage, in one moment chaos is silent, as if waiting for the master's words. Syllable by syllable, he declares his dark poem, slipping through thousands of colours, moods, from whisper to ghostly vocal to scream.
It is in one person - MR. Hyde and DOCTOR Jekyll - Mr. Doctor!
To Play With Me?"
In The Soundtrack
Of My Survival!
Fully Uprooted
From Their Key-Shaped
Skeleton
Cruelly Explore
Every Cranial Path
Always Closer...
Always More Painful!
The hall is filled with a terrifying cry of women, coming from the scene of premature burial in Val Lewton's film "ISLE OF THE DEAD". The orchestra explodes once again. A cascade of cold, horrible sounds spreads its wings like a demon of darkness, grabs its throat and cuts with a dead scream of a stuffy violin.
Creatures Or Spirits
I Beg You!
Or That Voice That Lies deep In My Intimate Self
o Allow This Swimming through The Lymphs Of Victims
While Dark Reigns Over The Sons Of Putrefaction!
When the wild metal trip reaches its peak, the perverse sacred aftertaste of the church's sombre organs begins to resound.
The piano gradually builds tension, somewhere from a distance, immersed in inhuman suffering Mr. Doctor shouts "HAEC VERBA AUDI – VITAM AETERNAM!".
The orchestra explodes again, this time repeating its incredible, expressive and dissociated electric guitar solo. Her beautiful, passionate and longing sounds continue for a moment, majestically floating in the air, and then give way to an equally lush, despairing and painful place for the cello. Filled with bitterness and sadness, the atmosphere explodes in one moment due to the artist's screaming subsequent phrases:
With The Deity of The Animal He Hunts
Seeking Possession with The Spirit Of The Beast:
So The Innocents, pervaded With The Spirit
Of The Great Predator -Princeps Huius Mundi-
Though Burnt On Our Pyres
Will Transcend Time
Soaring Over Physical Extinction!
The music, full of despair and regret, is quiet. Structures of rain hit the concrete, a storm is approaching. The child's desperate lament "MAMA, I'M COLD! MOM, LET ME IN! LET ME IN!”
Once again, the ecclesiastical organs resound. The demonished choir with ritual seriousness recites the phrase from "Les Chants de Maldoror" by Comte de Lautreaumont:
Iustum Mihi Ostende Unicum
Talis Monstris Ob Spectaculum
Stupefactus Ego Moriar...
DIES IRAE
Another solo guitar, a powerful dose of steel despair, longing, pain, piercing the heart and soul of emptiness. There is an outrageous explosion of internally devastating metal sounds, overwhelming music touches shamelessly, drills and... There was silence.
Silent sounds of the piano emerge again somewhere misty and again dark, cold and theatrical voice of Mr. Doctor:
Stretched Out Above
In The Ultimate Endeavour
To Clutch An Atom
That Does Not Sink...
The choir enters the action again. The atmosphere thickens, builds up and is overwhelming. Freezes blood in the veins.
Then the solution comes. The sound of drums, orchestras is raised, and the violin plays another rock solo. They tell a beautiful, sad story, and in their sounds one can still hear the same despair. However, the melody is abruptly broken off, cold stringed instruments return to its place, the tempo is accelerated, emotions are intensified and the organ is resounded again. The demonic choir is mad, repeats itself manically:
DIES IRAE! DIES IRAE! DIES IRAE! DIES IRAE! DIES IRAE!
DIES IRAE! DIES IRAE! DIES IRAE! DIES IRAE! DIES IRAE!
Teeth Sources of graphicspart.
We Crawl Like Earth-Worms
That Rats And Birds Fight Over.
Wake Up - Come Alive while Birds Of Soul
Usher In the Rays Of Chaos..
EPIDEMY! EPIDEMY!"
Polish version here
Sources of graphics:
https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/Devil_Doll/Dies_Irae/14309/
http://www.expose.org/index.php/artists/display/devil-doll-ita.html
http://gothnight.blogspot.com/2010/07/devil-doll-historia.html
http://dying.art.pl/devil-doll/dies-irae/artwork
https://www.discogs.com/Devil-Doll-Eliogabalus/release/2700264
http://www.metalmusicarchives.com/album/devil-doll/the-girl-who-was-death
Love this band, i remember finding out about this band back in 2006 but when researching i could only find unrelated bands with the same name lol. got all of their music on some old hdd gotta back it up now (: