Review by Carl on August 20, 2023.

Aha, the black industrial techno whatever project of Magus Wampyr Daoloth and Mika from Impaled Nazarene. There seems to be no way around it, either you're on board with it, or you want to wipe your behind with it. At least that's the impression I have from it. I never had any problems with it, honestly. What they did have in my opinion is this: when they were good, they were awesome. When they were bad, you better reckon they sucked alright. But that's luckily not the case here.

As a first, it is important to state that this is barely metal to begin with. The backbone of the Diabolos sound is formed primarily by the primitive industrial sounds by pioneers such as Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly and Non, but a whiff of chauvinism is allowed on my part, because I hear the influence of Belgian acts like A Split Second, Front 242 and Suicide Commando as well. Lump in some primal techno and rave elements, and there you go. A cold, nihilistic atmosphere is created by the keyboards, with scraping sampled guitars added, underpinned by mechanical percussion. These throbbing industrial tracks plow forward at a steady marching beat, while Mika's distorted vocals spew forth all kinds of blasphemies. Reading this, one might think that this is all just a cacophony of random sounds and "Rosemary's Baby" samples cobbled together, but let me assure you that it all falls into place, and it's actually pretty, well ... danceable! Especially 'Satanic Propaganda' is pretty banging, sounding like a possessed Laibach meets the early works of Ministry and Front Line Assembly. I'd even go so far as to call this track an overlooked classic in the realm of black (metal) industrial. The only note of criticism I will make is that the sounds used here have not all aged that well, but I can't really fuss over that too much really, given the awesome music.

This is the type of stuff you probably need an open mind for to appreciate. I have a liking for electronic music, so you won't hear any peep from me, but I can easily imagine the conservative metal fan recoiling in absolute horror. To each his own, right?

And allow me to leave you with a tidbit of trivia: for the track 'Satanic Propaganda' a video was shot, with images of satanic rituals, burning crosses and so on, and whenever there was some 'satanic panic' bullshit on the news here in Belgium, the item was always accompanied by images from that video, including the close up of Mika's ugly mug. The 90's were awesome.

Rating: 8 out of 10