Points: 9 / 10

The riddle's solution: is that it is not a regular album. It is a movie soundtrack, namely for Death's Design. A movie I have never heard anything about in my life, even better experts of the movie scene are shaking restrained their heads. No wonder, then if you check the homepage, you have to notice, that this film has never been finished and there are no chances for that anymore, at least not in the original planned form...

But, who cares! Then this CD is great enough even without that movie. It offers a lot small sound rags, orchestral blots, short passages of normal DM music ( incl. singing ), which are leant against the Nightwork-phase, as well as plentyful trips to other musical fields like Jazz, Ambient, some oriental ... etc. This is all mixed fluently and without to be scared at the idea of contacts by master Blakkheim and Dan Swæno. The end result is a really interesting cocktail. Well, you may miss some of the old Black Metal passages which consequently would form the rags to whole tracks, but, for that, this album offers something better, namely fascinating ideas and unloads of atmosphere!

You will see, with the little help of that wonderful designed booklet maybe, how all the pictures and images go through your mind. Also pleasant is the fact, that the metal part is predominate. As far as that goes, I can recommend Death's Design absolutely to almost every friend of exceptional darkdiet like Arcturus and Ulver ( the album before the last ). It remainds only one criticism point: for a soundtrack the running time of 43:26 minutes is pretty short, so it gets 9 great points.

Part 2 ( by guest writer Wade Conrad )
Let me first say that I know there is already a review of this album on this site. The truth is I like this release so much, I felt like I had to throw in my 2 cents worth! I think that most DIABOLICAL MASQUERADE fans will note that the band ( Blakkheim and his vast assortment of guest musicians ) has always been quite cinematic in scope and vision. I think all the albums could work as soundtracks in some form, but this is the first DIABOLICAL MASQUERADE release to be officially marketed as a soundtrack. And it definitely works on that level!!
Blakkheim seems to have a different side to his musical personality that is a lot more METAL than his full time band, Katatonia. Every couple years, he gets together with his friend, Mr. Dan Swano, they go into the studio with Dan handling production and Blakkheim unleashes his metal demons for us all to hear. This release is however, the most diverse piece of work DIABOLICAL MASQUERADE have ever done. It is also the first to integrate Blakkheim's clean vocals into the mix. Probably the first time the great one, Mr. Heim has ever attempted them. They come out to my ears sounding a bit like a mix of Emperor's Ihshan and Dan Swano himself. I think the balance between the harsh and clean vocals on this release is perfect, but I really hope he doesn't decide to overdo it on the next release because I think it would be possible to overdo the clean vocals. Aside from that, the music on this release is quite simply but, EXCELLENT!!!! It basically takes the ideas and musical concepts explored on the previous album, Nightwork to the next logical extreme. And that my friends, is a good thing. As mentioned by German friends, the music includes some elements previously unexplored by Blakkheim. It has some jazzy parts, some ambient stuff, a little electro, and yes one part does sound a bit "oriental"!!! There is even a guitar solo on here that sounds like it was written by David Gilmour ( Pink Floyd ). Yes, 43 minutes is too short, but such is life my friends. I give it 10 points, easily.
10 well deserved points!!!!!!

Diabolical Masquerade