Diamanda Galas
The Divine Punishment & Saint of the Pit

I have always hated reissues that tamper with the original content of a work, perhaps stuffing it with useless bonus tracks exclusively to raise the price of the CD, or worse, cramming two different albums on the same medium, which might have little in common. In this case, I really consider making an exception: in fact, coming across the first two chapters of the "Masque of the Red Death" trilogy by Diamanda Galas, one after the other and at the price of a single CD (mid-price to boot!) is truly an opportunity not to be missed! Whether for the stylistic and conceptual continuity between the two works (released in the same year, 1986), or due to their short duration (not even seventy minutes in total), the overall impression is that of encountering a unique work, with the advantage of having a more complete and continuous view of the represented concept.

"The Divine Punishment" and "Saint of the Pit" (along with "You Must Be Certain of the Devil", which however takes a different stylistic path, oriented toward more canonical music closer to rock and blues traditions) comprise the monumental trilogy that the artist, following her brother's death in 1986, dedicated to the scourge of AIDS: a path of meditation and denunciation that will culminate in the brutal live performance "Plague Mass", commonly considered the artistic peak of the Greek-American singer.
The two works considered here best represent Diamanda's avant-garde phase, and though less chaotic and anarchic than previous episodes, they still remain among the most traumatic experiences one can have in music.

Compared to the past, in fact, Galas seems to have clearer ideas; it is perhaps the extreme complexity of the concept, the delicacy of the themes addressed, and the personal involvement in the events that impose a certain dialectical caution and a more orderly conduct upon her. But it is precisely this clarity of intent, this proceeding with arguments that allows the artist to employ her energies more effectively, measure out her overpowering expressive force, and thus avoid unnecessary dispersions. The fury of the beginnings is not at all asleep, it is even rationally channeled and restrained so as to be more damaging when unleashed. And it is no coincidence that here we will find the most intense moments and the most deadly crescendos of the singer's entire career.

From a strictly musical point of view, the two works, particularly the first one, constitute a gallery of horrible and desolate images that is really difficult to describe in words without falling into excessive emphasis. On the basis of minimal synth phrasings, environmental situations, and sporadic percussion, it is the singer's voice, with its four-octave range, that rightly takes center stage. An incredible array of hisses, screams, and laments that the highly talented singer adopts to impersonate, from time to time, all the characters of the tragedy represented: on one side the "plague victims," AIDS patients, ostracized by society and abandoned to themselves and their atrocious sufferings; on the other side the "inquisitors," the world of the well-to-do, the "good society" that, amid indifference, fear, suspicion, and even disgust, marginalizes these people, treating them like contagion spreaders.
An attack that provocatively draws from the Old Testament and is directed primarily at ecclesiastical authorities and the most bigoted and hypocritical manifestations of Christian morality. The figure of an indifferent and uninterested God in the sufferings of men, reaching unprecedented peaks of cruelty and sadism, therefore has nothing blasphemous about it. And the "satanic facade" (the Devil, closer to human nature, being able to understand its vices and weaknesses, becomes a humane and merciful god, a god for men, closer to the earthly and real sufferings of humanity) wants to be merely a provocation for a cynical and ruthless social system: the ideal metaphorical representation to carry forward a denunciation with political and social implications much more concrete and rooted in everyday reality than this music with gloomy esoteric settings might suggest.

"The Divine Punishment" is structured in two very long compositions, respectively divided into six and three sections.
The atmospheres are those of a witch hunt, and the ruthless march of the inquisitors unfolds among the declamatory tones of the initial "This is the Law of the Plague", and the terrible scenarios of suffering that will follow, now described by distant and evocative Hellenic and Arabic chants, now by vocal solos, acrobatics worthy of an operatic singer, now by sonic orgies in which Galas's spectral voice multiplies and weaves chilling and strongly onomatopoeic scenes (the buzzing of blowflies in an infernal circle, the croaking of frenzied frogs in a cursed pond, the cawing of crows menacingly descending on the dying).
Gasps, sighs, mocking sounds, brutal growls, lamentations on the verge of being unsustainable, even the cracked voice of a child: everything that can be emitted by the human mouth becomes useful for describing the inferno of a terminally ill patient, and the cold electronics give just the right touch of bleakness that allows us to identify with a (metaphysical) hospital ward. A succession of frames and landscapes, between unease, tension, and sudden bursts of madness, culminating in the moment of maximum intensity of the work, the concluding "Io sono l'Anticristo", sung in Italian (and Galas's strange accent only makes it all the more demonic), in which the singer's ungraceful voice weaves a chilling ceremonial, a crescendo of imposing martiality in which distorted and desperate screams force us to lower the stereo volume to avoid the neighbor calling the cops!

"Saint of the Pit" slightly softens the tones and delivers a more human Diamanda Galas but still damn determined to pursue her polemical intentions.
"La Treizième Revient" is a sick, visionary instrumental track overture of organ, which stands somewhere halfway between an evocative rite and a witch's sabbath. "Deliver Me" instead is an Arabic vocal solo that resumes the theme of the homonymous track present on the previous tome. These two introductory episodes lead to the real body of the album, the next three tracks, in which poems by Baudelaire, Nerval, and Corbière are recited. "Heauton Timoroumenos" alternates an anxious whisper with enchanting sirens melodies (both those of Ulysses and those of the ambulance!), while "Artémis" is a dark and menacing lullaby supported by a solid piano loop and Galas's dark and theatrical singing. But the real pinnacle of the album (and perhaps of the artist's entire career) is the twelve devastating and oppressive minutes that comprise the monumental "Cris D'Aveugle": between overlapping voices, Gregorian chants, nursery rhymes, epileptic machine-gun bursts, and desperate cries, the track represents the zenith of Galas's bleakness, and in the martial and inquisitorial crescendo of the piece, all of this incredible and inhuman artist's vocal abilities are condensed, setting up a genuinely mighty and formally impeccable sonic orgy, a cathedral of sounds that will crumble together with our ears until it is reduced to a broken wheeze, pathetic in its plea for mercy, a perfect farewell to the tragedy represented.

Galas's journey will continue to more comforting, but no less intriguing, shores with the next chapter of the saga, which, as mentioned at the beginning, will see the singer temporarily abandon the challenging terrains of the avant-garde to measure herself against the song format. These two albums, excellent for those wanting to explore the most spectral and iconoclastic side of this unique and uncompromising artist, undoubtedly remain among the most compelling episodes of an exceptional career that, in my opinion, never faces real moments of sagging or pauses of stagnation. Listen to believe.