Honor-bound to bring you new music, tonight Unreality Music introduces you to Diablo Swing Orchestra. Before you go any further, go over to MySpace and listen to their Balrog Boogie track. Then come back and we’ll talk about it.

Done it? Good. Now let’s talk…

I first heard these guys on the cover CD for this month’s Classic Rock magazine, and the music blew my mind. It’s a fully realized mix of swing, opera and heavy metal. I can honestly say I’ve never heard anything like this band in my life – and I love it.

Imagine Evanescence on heavy-duty steroids and you’re still not even close. Regular metal will never sound the same again – what this group do is combine traditionally classical instruments with crushing metal riffs. Amazingly, what comes out the other end of this is crazy, uplifting metal music that is so totally uplifting.

Other music writers are similarly dumbstruck by Diablo Swing Orchestra:

Nowadays, in the metal scene, everyone seems to be doing what bands from the 80’s and early 90’s already shaped, most metal music kept recycling itself over and over again until we sadly got used to that fact without minding much. When a band like D:S:O suddenly appears and breaks the whole metal scheme with such an original sound and renewed vibe, I just can’t help to be utterly impressed as I am right now.

Anyway, I managed to get my hands on a copy of their album, The Butcher’s Ballroom. It’s a sublime listening experience. Balrog Boogie opens the album – it’s the most accessible track on the whole album. It’s followed closely by Heroines, which reminds me of Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin, but with far more power. I can almost see lead singer Annlouice Loegdlund at the helm of a Viking longboat singing this into a stormy sea.

I’ll maybe review the Butcher’s Ballroom album in the next few days. If you want to get yourself a copy of it, go to Amazon or check out their blog for a list of online stockists.

As far as I’m concerned, Diablo Swing Orchestra are the most original thing to hit the metal scene in decades. I simply can’t remember the last time I’ve been so excited about a metal band as I am about this one. D:S:O are a breath of fresh air for the heavy metal scene and I hope we start to hear more of this cross-genre madness in the future!

You can listen to more songs from the album below:

[tags]Emerging Artists, Rock, Diablo Swing Orchestra, Heavy Metal[/tags]