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Diablo Swing Orchestra - Sing Along Songs for the Damned & Delirious

SKU 19-SR3050
Really good, really interesting and unique new Swedish metal-and-far-beyond group who combine Louis Jordan jump-jive with a touch of rockabilly with female vocals ala the Andrew Sisters and male vocals ala Sleepytime Gorilla Museum with metal guitars. Yowzah - what a crazy idea and it really WORKS.

"Imagine a cross between the Squirrel Nut Zippers, some of J.G. Thirlwell's more swing/exotica-oriented work, and Lacuna Coil and you've got Diablo Swing Orchestra. This Swedish group combines swing and hot jazz in a '30s style with metal and operatic female vocals, with the results being quite compellingly weird, though decidedly not for everyone. Their instrumentation -- guitar, trumpet, keyboards, bass, cello, drums, and dual male-and-female vocals -- allows for a fair amount of energy and style-hopping, but the songs always work as songs rather than as mere displays of instrumental/vocal technique (though it must be said that Annlouice Wolgers has an astonishing voice), and their thrashy riffs have a groove that'll get any moshpit moving. The European funhouse/carnival atmosphere occasionally gets a little too thick, giving Sing-Along Songs the feeling of an elaborate joke, but the Orchestra always gets quickly back on track, with songs like "A Tap Dancer's Dilemma" offering thoughtful lyrics atop the rampaging swing-metal grooves. Ultimately, this is too weird a record to ever succeed in any kind of mainstream way, but fans of the groups cited above (or of Tim Burton movies, as Danny Elfman's soundtracks to them are a clear stylistic reference point) will almost certainly dig it."- Phil Freeman /All Music Guide


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Whether you believe the band's "history" or not (and you can read it right here: http://www.diabloswing.com/booklet.htm ), there is nothing else like them. Every so often a band comes along that carves out such an original style that no one else has been there before them, and anyone who comes after can only stand in their shadow. The DSO is one of those bands: fusion of 1920s swing, cutting-edge metal, kaleidoscopic instrumentation and vocals that veer from Wagner to Elfman with a hundred points between. Their first disc, The Butcher's Ballroom, was good, but ultimately humorless; this one, from the cover art onward, is superior in every way, a macabre silliness that would make a wonderous soundtrack for the cartoons of Gahan Wilson, Chas. Addams, and Edward Gorey. Diabolical!
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