THE BUTCHER'S BALLROOM

Diablo Swing Orchestra is often praised as the next big thing in female led heavy metal. The Butcher´s Ballroom is their debut album, but it´s a very impressive album in terms of musicianship, and in some respect originality. If you like female led heavy metal bands like Nightwish, Stream of Passion, Within Temptation or any of the countless others, Diablo Swing Orchestra is mandatory listening. Diablo Swing Orchestra is a bit different from the rest of those bands though, as they try hard to incorporate progressive ideas into their music.

The music is basically heavy metal with a female operatic singer very much like Nightwish. In fact Annlouise Loegdlund has a very similar voice to Tarja from Nightwish. Like Nightwish there is also sporadic male singing for varitation. Daniel Håkansson isn´t a very impressive singer though. There are many different influences in the music and as a result of that there are many different styles and genres incorporated into Diablo Swing Orchestra´s music. Note the Swing rythm in Balrog Boogie or the spanish latin inspired acoustic guitar parts that occur in several of the songs.

What is most notable in Diablo Swing Orchestra´s sound is the extensive use of cello in their music. This gives the music a folky/ classical quality that sets them apart from many of their peers.

The musicianship is outstanding on The Butcher´s Ballroom and singer Annlouise Loegdlund has to be praised for her beautiful singing. She sound very much like Tarja from Nightwish when she sings her operatic parts, but she also masters more calm singing styles.

The production is very good. Just the way I like a metal production.

This is a very good album, but even though Diablo Swing Orchestra really try to be original there are still way too many metal clichés on The Butcher´s Ballroom to really excite me. I feel like I´ve heard those same rythm guitar riffs a million times before and honestly I cannot understand with this much talent in the band why they can´t be more inventive when it comes to the guitars. This part of their music really bore me and lets face it people this is heavy metal and the backbone of heavy metal is distorted guitar riffs. You can do all sorts of good and progressive things with your heavy metal music but if you haven´t got strong guitar riffs to back it up it soon gets generic. This is what happens with The Butcher´s Ballroom even though all sorts of things are done to make the music exciting. So a good album it is, but it never reaches the excellent mark for me. 3 stars is my conclusion.