The Butcher's Ballroom - Diablo Swing Orchestra

The Butcher's Ballroom is an album released by Swedish avant-garde metal band Diablo Swing Orchestra, the album was released in 2006 by Candlelight. Balrog Boogie is most definitely the best song on the album with a superb brass section and a great big band sound to it - mixed in with the crazy high pitch Swede singing in Latin and raucous guitar riffs makes it a must listen! Unfortunately a lot of the rest of the album is hit and miss - I like swing and I like metal but I guess it's the operatic sections I do not like - opera vocals get on my nerves and the sections on this album are no different. These guys are talented musicians though and it's ...  Read the complete review

Certainly among the more adventurous metal albums I've heard, 'The Butcher's Ballroom' is self-consciously experimental heavy metal, incorporating substantial elements of, as the band's name would suggest, swing music and opera. While opera has had its place in metal for a number of years, Ann-Louice Lögdlund's female vocals here are performed in full-blown operatic style, rather than the diluted imitations of bands such as Nightwish and Epica. The style occasionally fails to impress, or ends up sounding like an inferior version of something Finntroll might do, or failing that a Devin Townsend polka experiment, but for the most part it's rewarding and ...  Read the complete review