Diamanda Galas Album Reviews

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Litanies of Satan (1982)

Litanies of Satan (1982)

7

Wild Women with Steak-Knives / The Litanies of Satan

Litanies of Satan is the most horrifying, frightening, confrontational and extreme album I have ever heard. Not as brutal as some of John Zorn's exercises in extremity, buy similarly uncompromising, Litanies should be approached with caution if you're not used to artists that break down barriers between genres, notions of what constitutes art and what noise and basically question your notions of what constitutes music itself. Most artists color inside the lines, several find joy in crossing the lines, and some stay as much on the outside as on the inside. Diamanda Galas sounds like the kind of artists who's never even colored inside the lines. If fearless innovation would be the main criterion to judge albums by on this site, then this wouldn't get a 10. I'd get a 20, certainly when you keep in mind this was her recording debut. You already know this doesn't resemble a conventional pop album and Diamanda Galas doesn't really sound like a girl from San Diego with Greek parents. On the other hand, it's not easy to explain what she does sound like. Some electronic manipulation notwithstanding (and the occasional buzzing drone), there are only vocals on this album, often multi-layered. It's the voice itself, and how it is used, that is the core of Galas' career. Spanning several octaves and an endless array of possibilities, it's a weapon and cure that more often than not makes use of its most extreme potential: Galas does not only switch from singing to moaning. Instead, she screeches, shrieks, breathes, hollers, purrs, bellows, whispers, rattles, rambles, spits, stutters, cries, tells, scats, inhales as if suffocating and almost vomits her sounds and words. "Wild Women with Steak-Knives" bears the sub-title "The Homicidal Love Song for Solo Scream" and that lets you know what you're in for. Her voice switches from the sounds you hear in unfamiliar (some people call them "primitive") languages to a spine-curdling shriek (after one minute) that's even more horrible than a fork going unbearably slow over porcelain. More often than not, her 'vocals' are unintelligible, but when it is, it's often pure nonsense ("I'm - talkin' about - steak, steak, steak, …") that's frightening because of the stunningly intense delivery of it all. She became somewhat of a household name later on and contributed to John Zorn's The Big Gundown (she's the opera singer from hell in "Metamorfosi"), Barry Adamson's debut and several avant-garde artists, but as far as I know, there's nothing even remotely as possessed as Litanies. When she layers her voice, her hiccups, grumbles, wheezes and fractured delivery are probably what Linda Blair was hearing throughout most of The Exorcist. Of course, according to some people, this kind of music is supposed to have a cathartic effect on the listener. I don't know about that one, but it sure beats enduring mainstream radio these days. The 12 minutes of "Wild Women with Steak-Knives" is probably already more than you can take, but it's the title track that steals the show. The first few seconds (layers and layers of screams and hisses) is the sound of sheer terror, but soon it develops into a diverse delivery of Baudelaire's "Les Litanies du Satan," a poem for the "Father to those whom in his sombre wrath, God drove from his Paradise on earth." It seems less random than "Steak-Knives," mainly because of the recurring line "O Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère" ("Satan, have mercy on my long distress" - a line you'll never forget once you've heard this album) and still stands as her most adventurous, intense and occasionally mind-blowing performance. Because of its sheer extremity and electronic manipulations (some of which already sound a bit outdated now), you're gonna need a high tolerance level, but you'll receive a priceless pay-off in return: a completely renewed outlook on the possibilities and outer ranges of what music is. Pleasant? No. Necessary? Definitely.