Devil Doll
Canción: Dies Irae \"La ira de Dios\" (Parte 1-2)
DIES IRAE starts with a \"praeludium\" for string orchestra: a frightening rhythmical crescendo of shrieking bows in the brightest -\"PSYCHO\" tradition. A majestic explosion of cellos draws a powerful melody while the violins turns more and more into sharp blades, cutting the eardrums with some demented high-pitched screams. Silence. A distant piano lost in the storm- plays THE classic Devil Doll interval (augmented 4th which comprises three whole tones in the record: G and C sharp), the prohibited harmony, called In the old books Diabolus in Musica: It is the magic TRITONE. It introduces & mysterious melody of Slavic charm, first played by english horn and bassoon, then by the string sections of the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra joined In its devastating finale by the whole electric sections of Devil Doll crashing the wall of sound. Apart from its evilish connotations the tritone has also a second meaning, peculiar to DIES IRAE: it is the same interval that introduces the CONCERTO MACABRE for Piano and Orchestra composed by George Harvey Bone, the fictitious musician to whom the whole album is dedicated (see credits in the CD booklet: in fact the CONCERTO is composed by the great Bernard Herrmann, and is available on a RCA CD called The Classic Film Scores of B.H.�). Bone is the main character of the movie HANGOVER SQUARE, a forgotten gem directed in 1944 by the German filmmaker John Brahm: he is a classical musician of great talent who unconsciously turns into a killer after hearing a certain dissonant harmony. At the premiere of his masterpiece, the CONCERTO MACABRE, George Harvey Bone (impersonated by young actor Laird Cregar who will die just before the release of the movie) finds death through flames in a memorable finale Fire: we all remember how Mr. Doctor escaped miraculously through flames when, on september 3rd 1993, during the mixing sessions of the first (and now lost) version of DIES IRAE, the Tivoli Studios of Ljubljana burnt completely. The diabolical thread that seemed to link the fate of George Harvey Bone and Mr. Doctor has been finally broken with the re-recording of DIES IRAE in 1995: the inlay card of the CD -inside the magic circle with the Devil Doll inside- with a touch of black humour states that \"THE CURSE IS OVER\".
The first words of the album surprisingly do not come from Mr. Doctor. A defamatory female voice sets the scene ending with an eerie glissando: the booklet notes reveal the presence of an exceptionally talented soprano, the young croatian vocalist Norina Radovan. Some tense Herrmannesque string pizzicatos introduces Mr. Doctor: over an Intricate choral background He whispers the first phrase, before two of His thousand voices run after each other in a vortex of dreamy psychedelic echoes. It's the signal: the group explodes in a sabbath of monolithic violence, dosed by a full group/orchestra coda.
