Diabolical Masquerade - Official Website
Death's Design |
Sweden
 |
|---|
Type: Full-Length
Release Date: 2001
Label: Avantgarde Music
Genre: Atmospheric, Avant-Garde, Black
1.
Nerves In Rush
2.
Death Ascends - The Hunt (Part I)
3.
You Can't Hide Forever
4.
Right On Time For Murder - The Hunt (Part II)
5.
Conscious In No Materia
6.
A Different Plane
7.
Invisible To Us
8.
The One Who Hides A Face Inside
9.
...And Don't Ever Listen To What It Says
10.
Revelation of The Puzzle
11.
Human Prophecy
12.
Where The Suffering Leads
13.
The Remains Of Galactic Expulsions
14.
With Panic In The Heart
15.
Out From The Dark
16.
Still Coming At You
17.
Out From A Deeper Dark
18.
Spinning Back The Clocks
19.
Soaring Over Dead Rooms
20.
The Enemy Is The Earth
21.
Recall
22.
All Exits Blocked
23.
The Memory Is Weak
24.
Struck At Random/Outermost Fear
25.
Sparks Of Childhood Coming Back
26.
Old People's Voodoo Séance
27.
Mary-Lee Goes Crazy
28.
Something Has Arrived
29.
Possession Of The Voodoo Party
30.
Not Of Flesh, Not Of Blood
31.
Intact With A Human Psyche
32.
Keeping Faith
33.
Someone Knows What Scares You
34.
A Bad Case Of Nerves
35.
The Inverted Dream / No Sleep In Peace
36.
Information
37.
Setting The Course
38.
Ghost Inhabitants
39.
Fleeing From Town
40.
Overlooked Parts
41.
A New Spark - Victory Theme (Part I)
42.
Hope - Victory Theme (Part II)
43.
Family Portraits - Victory Theme (Part III)
44.
Smokes Starts To Churn
45.
Hesitant Behaviour
46.
A Hurricane of Rotten Air
47.
Mastering The Clock
48.
They Come, You Go
49.
Haarad El Chamon
50.
The Egyptian Resort
51.
The Pyramid
52.
Frenzy Moods And Other Odditites
53.
Still Part Of The Design - The Hunt (Part III)
54.
Definite Departure
55.
Returning To Haarad El Chamon
56.
Life Eater
57.
The Pulze
58.
The Defiled Feeds
59.
The River In Space
60.
A Soulflight Back To Life
61.
Instant Rebirth - Alternate Ending
Review by Krys on July 31, 2001.
This album... or maybe this is not an album, the cover says it’s an Original Motion Picture Soundtrack... Regardless of what it is, Diabolical Masquerade delivered an absolute masterpiece incomparable to anything you’ve heard before.
This album/soundtrack is split up into 20 movements where each movement is broken down into subsections that create the 61-track index. Based on the official website, this index was meant to be a music layer to a movie about death following a certain pattern in taking lives from this world, but this pattern was broken. Sound familiar? Yeah, you got it, “Final Destination” was one of the main reasons that “Death’s Design” has never seen daylight. Enough of dry facts...
61 tracks squeezed into 42 minutes most of us associate with a collection of hyper-fast, eardrum-molesting grind-core, but in reality “Death’s Design” is one of the most original black metal albums in the last few years. Of course it’s not all black metal here. Progressive black metal would be the closest genre label I could muster if I had to classify this album. Blackheim (Anders Nyström from Katatonia) with help from Dan Swano, a small orchestra called The Estonian Quartet and few other musicians, jump from one music style to another with such ease that attempting to find a description of all forms performed here is just insane. At one moment you’ll hear mid or fast tempos of black metal that will go into ambient, oriental or just progressive metal making you standing speechless and wondering what the hell just happened. Don’t let the number of tracks fool you because most of the time you won’t even notice the smooth transitions from one to another. A mix of clean and black metal vocals, which in my opinion are one of the best in this genre, are perfectly composed to the underlying music. Influences from the members’ original bands are well noticed and are perfectly arranged so with the blend of black metal speed and aggression create something new and utterly unique.
Just don’t expect to grasp this piece in one spin. It’s impossible. It’s already a third day that I’m listening to this opus and I’m still far from saying I know “Death’s Design”.
Bottom Line: If indeed this music was meant to be a movie soundtrack, “Death’s Design” would made it an instant classic, if not, it’s a music masterpiece nevertheless. Either way you look at this, as a regular CD or a soundtrack, you have to have this release.
Rating: 10 out of 10