Dogmatic

Several years ago, I had the extreme pleasure of sitting front row and center at a Diamanda Galás concert at Melbourne’s Art Centre. It was one of the most amazing gigs I have ever been to. With her new album now out ‘Guilty, Guilty, Guilty’ - Diamanda is getting some cool media attention. See below for an awesome interview via out.com and stay tuned to Dogmatic for a full review of her new album…

Though considered by some to be in the service of Satan himself, Diamanda Galás tirelessly wages a chilling musical war on behalf of the forgotten, the voiceless, and the doomed.

Diamanda Galás has been called ‘the Bride of Satan’, ‘the Diva of Disease’, and ‘a cross between Elvira and Morticia Adams’ - and that’s just by music journalists. The classically trained pianist with a three and a half octave range - the staggering use of which regularly inspires comparisons to Greek opera singer Maria Callas - is known for her controversial (to say the least) opinions and her you’ve-got-to-see-them-to-believe-them concerts featuring an arresting combination of performance art, political protest, and punk bravado.

Galás is perhaps most widely recognized for The Plague Mass, which she performed covered in cow’s blood at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City in 1990. Considered by many to be her masterwork, the Plague Mass is drawn from excerpts of her trilogy of albums collectively entitled The Masque of the Red Death begun by Galás in the early ’80s at the dawning of the AIDS epidemic. The piece serves as a scathing indictment of both the Roman Catholic Church and society at large for ignoring and condemning those suffering from or killed by AIDS - including her brother and many of her close friends.

Never one to mince words, Galás is infamous for her biting, often shocking commentary on politics, culture, and art and her interview with Out.com certainly does not disappoint. She phoned from Spain - where her current European tour had just landed - to talk about her new live cover album of homicidal love songs, why she thinks Elton John is a ‘horrible little midget corpse’, and the similarities between Britney Spears’ voice and radioactive worms.

More…