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Broken Gargoyles
by
Broken Gargoyles Image
Metascore
85

Universal acclaim - based on 4 Critic Reviews What's this?

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  • Summary: The two-track release from Diamanda Galás features verses from Georg Heym's poems and was originally a part of sound installation at Hanover's Kapellen Leprosarium (in the Middle Ages it was used to house those with leprosy or the plague).
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  • Record Label: Intravenal Sound Operations
  • Genre(s): Experimental, Avant-Garde, Experimental Electronic, Avant-Garde Music
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Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 4
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 4
  3. Negative: 0 out of 4
  1. Uncut
    Aug 31, 2022
    90
    A tightly visionary work addressing the isolation and mutilation of World War I soldiers; if it’s unforgiving and unflinching in focus, that’s needed, to give voice to such suffering. [Oct 2022, p.29]
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  2. AllMusic
    Aug 31, 2022
    80
    Broken Gargoyles is yet another tremendous work from one of the most singular, incomparable artists of her era.
  3. The Wire
    Aug 31, 2022
    80
    Galás crisply delivers excerpts from two works by the German expressionist poet Georg Heym, Das Fieberspital (The Fever Hospital) and Die Dämonen Der Stadt (The Demons Of The City). [Sep 2022, p.46]
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  4. Pitchfork
    Aug 31, 2022
    77
    The album may not shock the singer’s die-hard fans, but Broken Gargoyles is a moving, painful listen and an ideal access point for the uninitiated.

User Reviews

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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. juanm12353
    Oct 1, 2022
    10
    This project was...honestly, mind-blowing. When I first tried to listen to Diamanda in 2016, I was 14 years old...I was scared, terrified, andThis project was...honestly, mind-blowing. When I first tried to listen to Diamanda in 2016, I was 14 years old...I was scared, terrified, and confused about what I was hearing. Years later, I gave it a second try and fell in love with her work and way of seeing the world and its dark and horrible side.
    Broken Gargoyles makes the first not-jazz-blues-piano record of Diamanda since Vena Cava in 1993 or Schrei X in 1996. It got me hyped up, I was waiting for something like this, and she gave me what I wanted and even more. Broken Gargoyles takes you to a dark and horrendous place, and you can feel the pain of the maimed soldiers, how terrified they were, and how the social rejection impacted on them and it gives you chills if you close your eyes and listen to it while imagining that context.
    It amazes me how only a few words, screams, extremely high notes, and electronic sounds can take me on a trip in a land of lamentations and sorrows. Diamanda is almost 70, but she is still a queen, the queen of those who were abandoned by this cruel world.    … Expand

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