THE GIRL WHO WAS ... DEATH

The Girl who Was... Death is the debut album from Italian/ Slovenian progressive horror rock act Devil Doll. The album was released in 1989. Devil Doll is different from anything I´ve ever heard before even though their music consists of many known elements from various genres.

I hear both goth rock, soundtrack horror movie themes, Classical music, a bit of heavy rock and also Cabaret style pieces. The Girl who was....Death is one long song. The time in my display says 66:06 minutes but there are really only 38:48 minutes of music before about 25 minutes of silence and then about 2:00 minutes of sound again. A very annoying and deceiving way of making an album IMO.

The music is very well composed and I´m entertained all the way through the album. The vocals from Mr. Doctor ( What a lame name) have the right lisping accented Dracula quality to match the lyrical horror theme. I´m actually reminded of Filthy Danny from Cradle of Filth more than once because of the theatrical vocal style ( Mr. Doctor don´t use extreme metal vocals though).

The musicianship is excellent and in addition to guitar, bass, drums and keyboard/ piano we´ re also treated with both violins and harp, and a big choir. This is truly epic music.

The production is good even though the most heavy parts are not that well sounding in my ears.

The music on The Girl who was....Death is truly progressive and epic music, but not really to my taste and I can´t give the album more than 3 stars. I´m a big horror movie fan, but the music just doesn´t create the kind of images in my mind that I think it´s supposed to. This is a good album though and I strongly suggest that you take a listen to see if you´ll be captured by the unique sound of Devil Doll. They certainly deserve the attention.