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Diabolical Masquerade is a side project by Katatonia´s guitar player Anders Nyström (also known as Blackheim in the past times) but he´s taken very seriously that path and the band has edited four full-length albums so far, which isn´t a despicable figure taking into account how temporary and “just for fun” are some outfit bands, most of the times. Blackheim delivers basically black metal with this band, and the style has been evolving with each new release since the beginning. “Ravendusk in my heart” is the romantic title used to baptize his first album, and, as a debut LP, it´s not wrong at all, but no surprises can be found on this CD. Here we can listen to traditional black metal with a lot of heavy metal elements, keyboards and a wide variety of tempos, so the experience of putting the CD on the player won´t be disgusting for the average listener. Anyway, this is the typical album where many diverse bands come to mind when hearing it, I mean, nothing really original nor a rip off or a cheap copy. Blackheim performs all the instruments in the recording, even the drums (however, listening to them properly, one can think he used a drum machine), and the sound of the recording is rather clean and polite. The use of guitars is very correct, weaving catchy melodies, and synths are in the right place without being too cheesy. The vocals? The black metal way, nothing more, nothing less. The bizarre detail comes where the well-known helper Dan Swanö sings in a track (“Under the banner of the sentinel”) including ultra-heavy 80´s elements, even with high-pitched screams and so on, I figure out you got the point... that passage is a bit out of place in my opinion, but anyway this album doesn´t pretend to be “true” nor something like that, in fact it´s very heavy metal at times and in the overall ambience. Final thoughts: listenable black metal, with strong influences from heavy, and very melodic, in a nutshell. This was!
| Tracklist |
| 1. The Castle Of Blackheim |
| 2. Blackheim's Quest To Bring Back The Stolen Autumn |
| 3. Beyond The Spiritual Moon |
| 4. The Sphere In Blackheim's Shrine |
| 5. Under The Banner Of The Sentinel |
| 6. Blackheim's Forest Kept The Season Forever |
| 7. The Darkblue Seajourneys Of The Sentinel |
| 8. Blackheim's Hunt For Nocturnal Grace |
| 9. Ravendusk In My Heart |
: 42.27
| Buy other Diabolical Masquerade albums |
