Review Summary: Outliers of the dark times, part 2
Let's look at symphonic metal's edgier cousin, because symphonic black metal has had its share of embarrassments too. Today, I want to talk about Dismal Euphony, a band who was there at the beginning of many music scenes in the 90s: symphonic black metal, and beauty and the beast types of bands. As it turns out, they also pioneered the whole "replacing your ex-singer with a completely different one" trend, with their 1999 album "All the Little Devils". But since this was one of the first, it's very different from a "Dark Passion Play" or "Storm", and to this day, it still sounds very unique.
"All the Little Devils" is one crazy, wild ride of an album. You're sure of that in the first song, poetically called "Days of Sodom", with the call-and-response between Ole Helgesen's raspy growl and Anja Natasha's weird, loud singing. Or on the other songs, with lyrics like "Sweet child, I wish you were dead" and "All the little devils are dancing". The whole album gives off an unhinged, strange vibe, made of various parts that don't seem to fit together and yet they do. It's casting a spell that you can't resist, as proven by "Victory", where Anja just repeats "Voice of death and misery, soon we'll have our victory" over a nicely eerie piano melody and increasingly heavy riffs. With the echo on her voice, she sounds like a choir of witches or cultists progressively taking over the world.
But it's in the title track that her vocals sound the best and most unhinged. She sings one more witch choir on the chorus, and cries, laughs and does peculiar melodies on the verses. The song also has some great drumming, raspy, hissing growls and eerie keyboards and backing vocals, but Anja's voice is one of its true highlights. In a lot of symphonic black metal bands, the women singing clean vocals (or "female vocals", as they're often called) tend to play second fiddle, they're really just back-up singers adding some atmosphere or softness. Anja, however, is the star of the show. She has a strong voice with a unique tone, and she uses it in all sort of ways, usually not caring about sounding pretty. Just listen to "Psycho Path", where she goes from melancholic to angry and evil. Of course, her voice is very much an acquired taste, and it could seriously keep you from enjoying the album.
There a few other things you'll have to overlook to enjoy the album. A lot of you will view lyrics like "I'm not a boyscout, I'm a lunatic", "Just call my name and I will be your enemy, just call my name and I won't be answering", "*** you, I don't care" and my personal favorite "Hatred of my own feet, I won't be able to walk this ground again" as try hard edgy bull***. You'd have a point, but I think they do a good job of establishing the album's strange and unhinged atmosphere. To me, one real flaw of the album would be the repetition. A lot of songs use the same riffs, however, "Lunatic" tries something different, with a heavier, headbang-worthy riff and lower growls. Even if other songs are a little repetitive, at least they have some pretty good instrumentations. They sound dark and weirdly catchy at the same time.
This album is far from perfect, but with its darkness and peculiar melody, and unusual vocals, this album is a pretty entertaining piece of campy symphonic black metal. It knows it's cheesy, and that's the point. It's a nice set of duets between a demon and a witch. Sure, it's different from their previous stuff, it's probably not true symphonic black metal. But it's a peculiar little album that manages to sound unique even today. In a genre that can get so formulaic and take itself so seriously, it's a real breath of fresh air. Listen to this for yourself to know what you think of it.
