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On disc: Opera Diabolicus



† 1614 - Claudia Ehrhardt - 8 stars


http://operadiabolicus.com







† 1614

† 1614
(Metalville - 2012)


Opera Diabolicus is the brainchild of David Grimoire (rhythm & lead guitar, keyboards on this album) and Adrian de Crow (bass on † 1614). They were involved in the productions of Umberto Eco's The Name Of The Rose in Gothenburg in 2006. This inspired them to do a metal album based on a story like this, the ones who don't know the book might know the movie by Bernd Eichinger which got in the movie theaters in 1986 - starring Sean Connery as the Franciscan friar William of Baskerville and Christian Slater is his apprentice Adso of Melk. They ended up with the story of Countess Bathory.

For the album the guys hooked up Snowy Shaw, Mats Levén, Camilla Alisander-Ason, Jake E and Nick Night for the vocals. Snowy Shaw also plays drums on this one while Eric Rauti plays lead guitar and Elias Holmlid adds the keyboard parts. The album was produced by Andy LaRocque at his Sonic Train studio and Mika Jussila mixed it at Finnvox Studio.

The album starts in a dramatic way with the Overture, just to head into The Gates. The song combines dark symphonic sounds, some doomy elements with a kind of narrative vocals. The Swedish combine bombastic sounds with dark and symphonic elements - and you even find some black-ish moments. It's a good idea to work with different singers, especially as the story had to be shortened to make it fit on one CD. The distorted vocals seems to be a bit out of place, but as they don't use them a lot, it's okay.

Fans of (dark) symphonic metal should check out Opera Diabolicus' album. But open-minded metalheads might dig it too.


8 stars

Claudia Ehrhardt
 

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