Customer Reviews

Malediction & Prayer

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4 star:		(1)
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After "Panoptikon", "The Litanies of Satan", and the "Masque of Red Death Trilogy", many felt betrayed by Galas' release of the piano-voice setting of "The Singer", sensing in it something like a commercial swerve toward more mainstream music. Whether or not this was true (one could hardly blame her for wanting to finally earn enough rent money for once), with "Malediction and Prayer" Galas revisits "The Singer's" spare simplicity of piano and voice, with complete success. The stunning quality that I remember from the Singer tour, but which seemed almost entirely absent on the album, is here captured with total effectiveness. You may safely disregard "Tired's" review below. And if Galas' other music is just too far out for you, then steeping yourself in the total performances of this recording will help you to begin to understand why Galas has such a devoted following.

if you are ready to be knocked flat, you might just be ready to try malediction & prayer. this may be diamanda's most tame cd to date & perhaps one of my all-time favorites. for those who have been curious enough to delve into her extensive catalog but weren't quite brave enough, this should be the first album you purchase or listen to. there's so much great material on prayer that i can't really begin to tell you which song to listen to first. in fact, i never skip a track when i listen to it or play it for friends.
to really describe what you 'll hear for the first time is about as difficult as telling you how you'll feel on the first day of school. you will most likely feel a tingly feeling in your spine when first listening to malediction & prayer but you'll get used to this feeling with time. witness the eight-octave range of the voice behind the piano & i'm certain every listener of classic music or blues will be thoroughly impressed. though not an easy listen by any means, malediction & prayer may be slightly tame in comparison to other works of ms. galas which are often considered intense at best but nevertheless packs the same punch as some of her earlier work.
here we have all live material which primarily comes from the concert for the damned. unlike the singer, the piano is much more crisp & less jagged which makes this a far better listen in my opinion. also, i think diamanda's voice here is a lot easier on the ears. most songs you'll hear are either traditional songs from around the world or classic blues/ r&b so i'm certain you've probably heard a great deal of them performed somewhere before but nobody does any of them quite like diamanda galas & i don't think anyone ever will. with a voice as versatile as her own piano skills, one cannot help but admire & respect the great talent behind such masterful sounds.
should you ask what other female vocalist diamanda could be comapred with, i can name a few even though very few of them have quite as much range.

patti smith, marianne faithful, tina turner, janis joplin, marias callas, edith piaf, & jessye norman

This is the most beautiful piece of work I've ever heard. Galas' voice captures the meaning of each song as easily as can be done. Her voice beautifully adds emotion to the lyrics. Songs such as 'Iron Lady', 'Si la Muerte' and 'Gloomy Sunday' made me think of how precious life is and how terrifying life can be at the same time. Especially these pieces of work will make you want to listen to this album over and over. 'The Thrill Is Gone', 'Insane Asylum', and 'I'm Gonna Live The Life' are harder songs, with a much higher voice use. 'I'm Gonna Live the Life' will inspire you greatly when you feel alone and when you feel like life is festering away and when you feel like you're a nobody. This beautiful album will make you think about the world, but especially about your own life, and will encourage you to keep on going.

perhaps the most accessible album Diamanda has done. M&P starts off strong with "The Iron Lady", a song which captures you with its bluntness and truth/cruelty. The high point on this album is Diamanda's version of "The Thrill is Gone", her banshee wailing that begins this track frightens you into heartache. Following in the tradition of her album "The Singer" Diamanda performs with all the power of her voice and piano. Few can listen to this album and not me disturbed one way or the other, and for this reason it's perhaps one of the best albums released this decade.

"Malediction and Prayer" was the first Diamanda Galas c.d. I ever bought. I absolutely was thrilled by it, astonished by her eerie delivery of such dark material and most importantly, I was very moved by her voice. Diamanda cannot be compared to any other artist-living or deceased. She is truly an original, seperate entity from today's contemporary music! I do hear from her music/renditions, an influence from blues and cabaret. Maybe she is a fan of Edith Piaf, Nina Hagen or Bjork? Obviously she is a fan of B.B. King and Willie Dixon. I was so mesmerized by Diamanda's voice that I went out and nearly bought her entire discography. If you're into husky female vocals with a touch of ear/glass shattering, multi octave interplay and an added bonus of blues, not to mention a host of multi lingual songs, than Diamanda Galas is definitely for you! I cannot name any other artist/musician that I deeply admire. I recommend this one first before venturing off into anything else in Diamanda's world- it may be to shocking, yet too enticing!!!

Sometimes, amateurs who have spent too many years reading cleverly bitchy British rag album reviews decide THEIR time has come to take an arguably "difficult" album and trash it.

Tired, indeed.

Diamanda Galas does not make pretty music about pretty things. You either like being grabbed by the throat or you don't.

Trying to compare original (or alternate) versions to Diamanda Galas' covers baffles me, frankly, since her whole approach is not so much to sing these as make them visceral experiences. What's to compare?

(Oh, and that "W. Dixon" person, the one who did Insane Asylum better? His first name was Willie.)

OK, I think even most people who love everything Diamada Galas has ever done will agree that she is something of an acquired taste, and this album is no exception. 'Easy listening,' she is not.
That said, I have to admit to being a big fan of her stuff, even though I have to take it in relatively small doses.

Having first been exposed to Galas through "The Litanies of Satan," "Wild Women with Steak Knives," and then gone on to "Plague Mass" two things immediately intrigued me about this album: although recorded in 1998 it was initially released on vinyl (remember vinyl?); and...Diamanda sings the blues?? Wow.

About the vinyl release, I happened across it not long ago in the record bins of a local CD store that has lately given over at least a third of their space to new and used vinyl. Except that's a relatively recent phenomenon. By the early 2000's a fair amount of new rap was coming out in vinyl, but in 1998 most of the audio world seemed pretty well convinced that vinyl was dead, buried, and thoroughly decomposed. What prompted Galas to put these tracks out on vinyl at that point in time is a mystery to me. I'm glad I paid the $25 for the (new) double vinyl album, though, as I notice that Amazon sellers have tagged it at $196 and up currently (2011).

[NB: The album was re-released in 2002 as a CD, for those of you who don't know what a "turntable" is. ;-) ]

The album consists of solo performances of Diamanda vocalizing ('singing' is too limiting a term) and accompanying herself on piano (and she's no slouch at the keys) in various live concerts. The very first tune cracked me up -- it begins with a furious piano solo, and it wasn't until the vocals were well established a few minutes later that I recognized the signiture B.B.King tune "The Thrill is Gone".

Heaven help the poor schmoe who stopped thrilling Ms. Galas, because she sounds like she may be eying him with homicidal intent.

Well, one expects Galas's music to be emotionally charged (to put it mildly), and to deal with dark and violent themes and feelings, and in that one is not disappointed in this album. In retrospect it now seems to me that the blues are a natural for Diamanda, though of course she does them in her own unique way (I have since heard "This Sporting Life"...) There is a certain element of humor here, which I had not previously heard in her work, probably not because it isn't there, but because up to now it's been overwhelmed by the avalanche of other sensations. Something about this live recording seems to bring out even more subtlties in her voice, if that be possible.

As other reviewers have pointed out, this is one of the "milder" albums put out by Galas, although if you are unfamiliar with her work it may still come off as one of the most powerful vocal albums you've heard. Not for the faint of heart, but well worth a listen or three, if only to clean out your ears from the dreck that plays on the radio these days.

You can never tell whatcha might get with Diamanda, but I love that in her.

This album absolutely blew me away, nothing I thought it would be and I love the fact that I got chills from the softness you can actually hear in her voice on most of the tracks, it's a definate top cd of mine.

Malediction & Prayer is my favourite out of all her album. The quality of the live recording is excellent! Her voice has got even more texture and feeling than on "The Singer". Malediction & Prayer (Concert for the Damned) is a collection of songs about execution and death. Some stunning cover versions that sound extremely different than the originals. On other songs she put her own lyrics to famous songs, and on other songs she put her own melody to famous poet's writings. She sings in English, Spanish, Greek, French and Italian. The subject might be dark but in my opinion the whole album is a very pleasant and beautiful experience. Her piano playing is breath-taking too. Mute records did a great job in the packaging of this CD.

When people hide their pain and suffering and let it ferment and eat up their souls and then finally express that which is repressed it sounds like this album. Although there is talk about Diamanda's work only coming from the perspective of people of extreme pain and insanity, I strongly identify with her expression not as just representive of this marginalized social category but of the human condition in general. I believe Diamanda's performance on this album and her music in general to be a strikingly genuine, honest, sincere, and true representation of the actualities of the human psyche. In particular songs like "The Thrill is Gone" embosses our ears with the real feeling of personal loss and pain. But "Kiegome, Kiegome" stirs more than just anger and painfull sadness, it unites the listener with the waves of feeling associated with burning (so the title translates). This album is highly recommended for those individuals who hold a deep esteem for the freedom artists have to explore different modes of expression as well as the content of those modes. It is necessary for the listener to not only hold an open mind but allow themselves the capacity to move there emotions in amplified frequencies.