#Diabolical Masquerade

[triste-guillotine]

DIABOLICAL MASQUERADE "Ravendusk in my Heart" CD 1995

1. The Castle of Blackheim 2. Blackheim's Quest to Bring Back the Stolen Autumn 3. Beyond the Spiritual Moon 4. The Sphere in Blackheim's Shrine 5. Under the Banner of the Sentinel 6. Blackheim's Forest Kept the Season Forever 7. The Darkblue Seajourneys of the Sentinel 8. Blackheim's Hunt for Nocturnal Grace 9. Ravendusk in my Heart

"Thunder and fire raping the sky Lustfilled desire, the weak ones must die

Warriors of death shall rise tonight Coming to kill the morninglight Nowhere to hide your time has come A vengeance for them and a feast to some

The eve of destruction - hellfire flames Raping the women the sacrifice has to be done Metal to metal - a yearning for blood The gallow is ready, the traitor is going to die

Fight till death with hate We end your life and you will die in pain No more life in sight The victory is won by the legions of the night"

Ravendusk In My Heart | Diabolical Masquerade | Peaceville

[rottingwaysofmisery]

Black Metal bands that Slow the Fuck Down!

The title may confuse you, honestly I’m still not sure what to title it, but I’m essentially going to be recommending a series of Black Metal bands that hardly or don’t use tremolo, are mid-paced, have an old school first-wave approach, or some sort of doom metal influence. Assuming you’re already familiar with Bathory and its slower moments I will be avoiding the more known bands.

Root

This really fucking raw and dark approach to heavy metal that sometimes borders on thrash metal with these slower grand moments, I would highly recommend their debut “Zjevení“ from 1990.

Master’s Hammer

The evil twin of Root, even though they’re both evil. Jokingly called the first “Norwegian Black Metal band” by Fenriz of Darkthrone (the joke being they’re Czech). If you give any of their albums a try I’d recommend “Ritual” from 1991.

Mortuary Drape

I’ve talked about them before on a post about the Italian metal scene, but essentially it’s this raw and primitive form of black metal that thrashes about. You may enjoy their debut “All the Witches Dance” from 1994. I feel I must clarify, my use of the word “primitive” here is more so in reference to the sound of the Old School, and not meant to imply anything that would give you the impression this is a Bestial Black Metal/War Metal or otherwise noisey band.

Barathrum

Black/Doom Metal band from Finland, their first few albums sound cavernous and yet fuzzy (God I wish they were on Spotify), but their later stuff is alright. Check out this song if you so dare.

Negative Plane

I’m not exactly sure how to describe this one, they’re definitely a unique band. I would definitely recommend them though.

Born for Burning

Specifically, the Swedish band that released “The Ritual” in 2019. Since they’re named after a Bathory song, you’d assume I’d recommend them to fans of Bathory, and you’d be right! Check this one out!!

Amen Corner

Root’s Brazilian cousin. I would recommend most highly their debut “Fall, Ascension, Domination”.

Decayed

I think this might be one of my favorite bands from the Portuguese scene, the speeds of their songs vary but I’d recommend this one.

Countess

This band is difficult to navigate through bc they have a lot of stuff that’s just eh. Surprisingly, the album I recommend most highly is not going to be their debut but their eighth album “Heilig Vuur”, I would also recommend this song.

Deinonychus

Oooo this is the juicy stuff. I would highly recommend “The Silence of December” and “The Weeping of a Thousand Years”, because texturally they’re some of the most interesting in all of extreme metal, at least in my opinion.

Samael

I’m not recommending all of this band’s discography, but particularly their albums “Worship Him” and “Blood Ritual”.

Diabolical Masquerade

The speed of their music varies and they have more traditionally second wave-esque songs, so I would recommend most highly this one.

Hades/Hades Almighty

For fans of Bathory, especially “Blood Fire Death” era. The double name is because they were formerly known as Hades but changed their name to Hades Almighty to differentiate themselves from an American band of the same name, but despite that they’re still known as “Hades” on some streaming platforms. I would recommend most their first two albums, “...Again Shall Be” and “The Dawn of the Dying Sun”.

Acheron

Sometimes closer to Death Metal, I would recommend “Rites of the Black Mass” on the warning that there’s really annoying and unnecessary intros to each song.

Ancient

While varying in speed, they don’t tend to rely on tremolos and blast beats as often as, say, Marduk. I would like to highlight their third album, “Mad Grandiose Bloodfiends” in particular, which has a flavor of vampirism and necromanticism and an excellent cover of Mercyful Fate.

Tyrannic

I would most highly recommend their sophomore release “Mortuus Decadence”, generally just some excellent black metal with influences from doom and traditional heavy metal.

Rotting Christ

Pioneers of the Greek-style of Black Metal, a style that blends more traditional heavy metal grooves with Black Metal. To recommend one album out of their discography, check out “Thy Mighty Contract”.

[superhardlikesteel]

Diabolical Masquerade - The Eerie Obzidian Circuz

Now this is a band I can see growing on me more and more. There's just something oddball about them. Really excellent symphonic black metal, maybe leaning a touch towards avant-garde.

[lesdeuxmuses]

Diabolical Masquerade - Death's Design: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Peaceville, 2019)

[clandestine-stars]

I am the hater

The tormentor

An eye for an eye

Everyone fucking die

[arealtrashact]

Have you seen house of the dragon?

No, it's missing something very vital to my interest in anything Westeros related.

[justforbooks]

Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work by Sarah Wynn-Williams

This account of working life at Mark Zuckerberg’s tech giant organisation describes a ‘diabolical cult’ able to swing elections and profit at the expense of the world’s vulnerable

Shortly after her waters broke, Sarah Wynn-Williams was lying in hospital with her feet in stirrups, typing a work memo on her laptop between contractions. Facebook’s director of global public policy needed to send talking points from her recent trip to oversee the tech giant’s bid to launch operations in Myanmar to her boss Sheryl Sandberg. Then she would give birth to her first child.

Wynn-Williams’s husband, a journalist called Tom, was livid but, as men tend to be in labour rooms, impotent. The doctor gently closed her laptop. “Please let me push send,” whimpered Sarah. “You should be pushing,” retorted the doctor with improbable timing. “But not ‘send’.”

This incident typifies how, in this 400-page memoir of her seven years at Facebook from 2011 – as it mutated from niche social network to global power able to swing elections, target body-shamed teens with beauty products and monetise millions of humans’ hitherto private data – Wynn-Williams had become part of what reads like a diabolical cult run by emotionally stunted men babies, institutionally enabled sexual harassers and hypocritical virtue-signalling narcissists.

The cult vibe of this birthing story is made stronger by Wynn-Williams channelling Sandberg’s 2013 book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. She quotes Sandberg’s injunction to pregnant working women – “Don’t leave before you leave” – taking its implication to be that she should work right up to the point that the baby’s head emerges into this fallen world. It doesn’t occur to her that Lean In feminism might serve as a fig leaf covering self-exploitation and soul-depleting workaholism.

A couple of pages earlier, Wynn-Williams writes like a wide-eyed convert: “It still feels exciting and important to spread this tool around the world and improve people’s lives.” An evidently clever former New Zealand diplomat, she was ideal fodder to help spread Facebook’s secular gospel, as her backstory reveals. After surviving a shark attack as a teenager, she resolved to spend her working life helping humanity. Upon witnessing how the nascent Facebook kept Kiwis connected in the aftermath of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, she believed that Mark Zuckerberg’s company could make a difference – but in a good way – to social bonds, and that she could be part of that utopian project.

Her naive faith reminds me of what Jon Ronson wrote about in So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed: at their inception both the internet and social media seemed, to some, unalloyed good things. It’s instructive for someone like me – who disdains social media and sees in tech giants the lucrative weaponising of hate masquerading as free speech, and the asphyxiation of democracy by the enabling of post-truth populists – to encounter such cockeyed optimism.

The “tool” Wynn-Williams talks about is not Facebook per se, but Zuckerberg’s cherished internet.org app (which has operated under the name Free Basics since 2015), devised to deliver the internet to connectivity-deprived countries, such as Myanmar, as part of what sounds like a system upgrade of Britain’s oxymoronic imperial mission to civilise black and brown persons.

What internet.org involves for countries that adopt it is a Facebook-controlled monopoly of access to the internet, whereby to get online at all you have to log in to a Facebook account. When the scales fall from Wynn-Williams’s eyes she realises there is nothing morally worthwhile in Zuckerberg’s initiative, nothing empowering to the most deprived of global citizens, but rather his tool involves “delivering a crap version of the internet to two-thirds of the world”.

But Facebook’s impact in the developing world proves worse than crap. In Myanmar, as Wynn-Williams recounts at the end of the book, Facebook facilitated the military junta to post hate speech, thereby fomenting sexual violence and attempted genocide of the country’s Muslim minority. “Myanmar,” she writes with a lapsed believer’s rue, “would have been a better place if Facebook had not arrived.” And what is true of Myanmar, you can’t help but reflect, applies globally.

Before she was disabused, Wynn-Williams fawningly adored Sandberg, as the pair crisscrossed the globe in private jets, bringing the good news of Facebook to foreign leaders. At one point [p40-41], for instance. Wynn-Williams recalls witnessing what happened when Sandberg meets New Zealand prime minister John Key at Facebook’s California headquarters, writing: “Until this moment, it had never occurred to me to see Sheryl as a celebrity or be awestruck by her... But now I can see how she’s sprinkling some of her stardust, whatever that magical quality is that she has that makes you forget to focus on the substance of the meeting at hand and instead wonder what it is she’s doing differently that makes her better than you.”

She approvingly quotes another Lean In message, that you should “bring your authentic self to work”. But what that means in Facebook reality becomes clear when, in her first performance review after giving birth, Wynn-Williams is told that co-workers are uneasy that her baby can be heard on business calls. The poor poppets. “Be smart and hire a Filipina nanny,” counsels Sandberg. Wynn-Williams does just that, but then something shocking happens. One day, Tom is checking the home camera when he notices a firefighter in their living room: the nanny has locked herself out and the baby inside the flat. But when Wynn-Williams later relates this disturbing event to colleagues, she feels as though she has made a faux pas – distracting them from their noble mission with personal guff. “The expectation of Facebook is that mothering is invisible,” she writes. Facebook cannot tolerate too much authenticity.

The book’s title comes from F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness.” For Wynn-Williams, Zuckerberg’s “move fast and break things” philosophy is just such entitled carelessness, leaving Facebook staff and their customers to sweep up the wreckage. But the Facebook she describes is not run by careless people, not really, but rather by wittingly amoral ones who use technical genius and business acumen to profit from human vulnerability. For instance, she claims Facebook – now Meta, which owns Instagram and WhatsApp – identified teenage girls who had deleted selfies on its platforms, and then supplied the data to companies to target them with ads for putatively tummy-flattening teas or beauty products.

Wynn-Williams’s shtick, often presenting herself as the only conscience in the room, does wear thin. I tired of reading of how shocked she was at some Facebook policy, while continuing to spread its values worldwide. “I’m astounded at the role money plays in elections in the US,” she writes at one point, as the 2016 Trump campaign gears up with political ads and targeted misinformation from which Facebook massively profited. Are you really so naive? I wrote in the margin. “I’m also against exporting this value system. But Facebook is effectively bringing this in globally by stealth.” And you’re part of it! I wrote in the margin. If only she’d taken to heart the critical messages of, say, David Fincher’s movie The Social Network or Dave Eggers’s novel The Circle, she might have leaned out earlier.

And yet her memoir is valuable, not just as indictment of the Facebook cult but of bosses’ entitled behaviour that will resonate for many. She depicts Zuckerberg as a tech-bro Henry VIII, a thin-skinned angry child whose courtiers let win at the board game Settlers of Catan during flights on his private jet. She charges him with lying to Congress about the extent of Facebook’s compromises to woo China and allow it to operate there, suggesting that his company was developing technology and tools to meet Chinese requirements that would allow it to censor users’ content and access their data. He was, she claims, much more in cahoots with Xi Jinping’s authoritarian regime than he let on to US senators.

On another private jet, relates Wynn-Williams, Sandberg imperiously invited her to sleep in the same bed. Wynn-Williams declined, but thereafter worried that she had upset her boss by not yielding to a presumably sexual demand, which she depicts in the book as the ex-Facebook COO’s entitled modus operandi with several women subordinates.

And then there’s what Joel Kaplan, currently Meta’s chief global affairs officer, allegedly did to Wynn-Williams at a boozy corporate shindig in 2017. She claimed that he called her “sultry” and rubbed his body against hers on the dancefloor. This wasn’t a one-off incident, she claims: indeed, there was a group at Facebook called Feminist Fight Club, whose members compared notes on such reportedly prevalent cases of sexual harassment by execs. An internal investigation cleared Kaplan of impropriety and soon after Wynn-Williams was fired for making misleading harassment allegations.

Last week, Meta responded to this book, calling it “a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives”. The company has denounced its former employee, claiming that she was not a whistleblower but a disgruntled activist trying to sell books. Most likely she is both.

Wynn-Williams notes that Facebook changed its name to Meta in 2021. “But leopards don’t change their spots. The DNA of the company remains the same. And the more power they grab, the less responsible they become.” That culture of irresponsibility and carelessness should worry us more than ever, she suggests at the end of the book, as Zuckerberg’s Meta is at the forefront of artificial intelligence, a technology even more potentially calamitous than the one he dreamed up in his Harvard dorm a couple of decades ago.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[l-u-c-i-i-e]

Carnival and "Mardi-Gras". [French Folks Traditions] part 1.

The three days that end the Carnival (Shrove Sunday, Shrove Monday, Shrove Tuesday) are generally called "incoming Lent" or "taking Lent". In French it is famous : "carême entrant", "carême prenant".

However, it is mainly on "Shrove Tuesday" that the rites related to the prosperity and protection of farm animals and crops are concentrated. It is also the day of masquerades, charivaris and other processions; and the night during which the diabolical meetings of cats, called the "cat sabbats", are supposed to take place.

The Masquerades:

According to Van Gennep, the origin of the word Carnival comes from the ecclesiastical late Latin "carne levaris, carne levarium, carne levarem" or "to remove the flesh".

The Carnival period is a time of reversal of established codes. We already know the probable recovery by the church of themes related to the Roman Saturnalia.

The primitive forms of certain disguises as well as the execution of a mannequin personifying the cycle have incontestably a very ancient aspect, and it is perhaps in the Middle Ages that these gestures were inscribed in the cycle of the Carnival. These festivities are sometimes accompanied by quests for victuals, from parents and neighbors, which will then be used to realize a group feast.

Brueghel the Elder, the fight between Lent and Carnival, detail.

["Carnival, history and traditions", Van Gennep and M. C Delmas, arranged and translated by me. If you want precise ref, DM-me]

[mistressaugury]

Fanfic Rec list for my favorite Reylo~

Part one. I wanted to share my fav's for those who like the same kind of things. A lot of them have controversal tropes, teacher/student relationship, Incest, Dead Dove: do not read, Possessive, Controlling. But there are also more with lighter tones.

(Heads up that I am not listing all of the tags or their warnings just a few tags that explain the fic. Please always check the tags on each fic before you read. Just in case.)

Canon compliant and Canon divergence

Star Wars: Legacy of the Force by BuffShipper : Rated Mature, Graphic depictions of violance, major character death, Smuggler Ben. Dark Rey, Slow burn, Female Finn, Angst/ hurt no comfort, eventual sex. Completed.

The Sequel Trilogy reimagined with smuggler Ben Solo reluctant to take on the family mantle of Jedi in the fight against the mysterious Kira Ren and the diabolical First Order...

Notes: I haven't finished this one yet but I AM LOVING it. It seems at first nothing has changed with Rey and Ben Solo on the opposite side of the war. But there are sutle hints at first.

Accidentally on Purpose by SirenBanshee : Rated Explicit, Rey Palpatine, Dark Rey, Bodygaurd Kylo, Arranged Marriage, Obessive, Possessive behavior, Happily Ever After, Completed.

Kylo Ren has served as loyal bodyguard and mentor to galactic princess Rey Palpatine ever since she was a little girl. But now she’s come of age, and her grandfather wants her to marry and continue the Palpatine line . . . If only her suitors would stop accidentally dying.

Note's: Very tormented Kylo Ren, he clearly wants Rey so bad. So big bonus if you like him pining and going about his feelings in extreme ways.

Dark Visions by Monsterleadmehome : Rated Explicit, Force Vision, Sexual content. One-Shot.

“I had a vision… of the Sith throne. And who was on it.” Rey’s voice falters a little, as scared as she is of what she’s seen—scared and another feeling she doesn’t dare tell Finn.

“Ren,” he assumes.

“And me.”

Note's: Pretty much its the scene of Rey telling Finn she had a vision but she doesn't tell him /All/ of what she saw. LOL

All At Once by Mosterleadmehone : Rated Explicit, Costume party, mask ball, Virgin Rey, Virgin Kylo, One-Shot.

The First Order has taken over the planet Neftali in the Soccoro system. Every year, the town of Cordel Cove hosts a winter carnival that culminates in a masquerade ball. The presence of one Supreme Leader has been requested.

The Resistance has come to Neftali to strike a deal with a shady organization, using the carnival as a distraction. They send Rey to the masquerade to keep an eye on things. After one too many drinks, the masked man all in black catches her eye and asks for a dance. But what will happen when the masks come off?

Note's: Takes place after The Last Jedi with the Resistance running around. IPretty much Rey and Kylo meet back up and lose their virginity to each other. Normally first times aren't my thing but I loved the longing for connection between the two. It's rather sweet.

Au's

The Hatstall by L3tty_B4rro5 : Rated G, Hogwarts-Au, Fluff and angsty, teacher and student relationship, Professor Ben Solo. Completed.

DADA professor Ben Solo is swept off his feet when Rey, a new transfer student from Ilvermorny, arrives at Hogwarts. While trying to understand why she's so captivating to him, he realizes that's not the only mystery he'll have to solve. Rey might have more secrets than he expected and as much as he tries, avoiding her is not an option.

Notes: I didn't see a lot of the twists coming. Rather cute and one of the light hearted fic's on my rec's if you over look the student and teacher attraction.

Two Gold Rings by TheAmberKitten : Rated Mature, Graphic depictions of violance, Werewolves, dystopia, Completed

Anywhere had to be better than Jakku, Rey thought. But if California wasn’t safe, where else could she go?

The two girls looked outside the open door of the train car to watch the desert scenery fly by. There was the sound of howling and Rey observed the outline of what appeared to be a hundred wolves running along the elevated tracks.

She wondered if one of them had golden eyes.

Notes: Rey is force to wander for her own safety with werewolves having taken over. Prefect if you want something bleak and atmospheric.

A Shot at the Night by CaptainCabinets : Rated Explicit, Vampires, mild blood and gore, vampire Ben, Maid Rey, On Going fic.

Rey Johnson needs money and has plenty of blood. Kylo Ren has plenty of money and wants Rey Johnson's blood. They make a mutually beneficial arrangement.

OR

A vampire sugar daddy AU

Notes: This one has to be my favorite of fav's. I live in the same setting as where the story takes place and its very accurate. Rey is a struggling woman and gets swept up in the vampire world to be a blood donor to Ben. But clearly there is a underlying attractions and indepent Rey gets scared. Also heads up its still being worked on.

The Lion's Roar by MurderOfCrowss : Rated Explicit, Rape/Non-con, Graphic depictions of violance, werewolves, A/B/O or Omegaverse, Dead Dove don't eat, Dom Kylo Ren, Submissive Rey, dark HAE, Compeleted.

Rey's day goes from bad to worse when she meets up with a werewolf to pay off her sister's gambling debt. When a simple encounter goes terribly wrong, she finds herself bound to a man she barely knows. Kylo as his pack calls him, doesn't care if she consents or not to their union. Rey will have to find a way to escape or spend the rest of her life trapped by his side.

Note's: This was my first intro to Omega verse so I already have a skew idea of the trope thanks to this fic. It's very intense and pretty adventurous, after Rey is now trapped with Kylo Ren she goes on different life ending adventures. One with a rivial clan of alpha's trying to kill Kylo. And another was some sort of alpha werewolf fighting group. Pretty good if you want action and adventure to your dark romance.

Neighbors With Benefits by ThePuddleJumper : Rated Explicit, Omega verse, Alpha Ben, Omega Rey, enemies to friends, pining, attempted assult, On Going fic.

Rey’s neighbor is the most annoying man she’s ever met. Always too self-absorbed to bother saying hello in the hallway, always taking her favorite parking spot in the garage, always avoiding the building’s social gatherings—didn’t his mother teach him any manners?

But when someone gives the grumpy alpha a rut-inducing drug, Rey decides to help. She may prefer to ignore the frustrating man, but she’s not going to abandon a person in trouble—no matter how aggravating they might be.

Unfortunately, the proposed ‘neighbors with benefits’ solution is complicated. It may seem simple if she just thinks about the biological aspect, but Rey has no interest in having a mate or any long-term relationship. The alpha next door agrees to her terms, but both of them may be signing up for more than they can handle.

And neither considers the risks to their hearts.

Notes: Very protective Ben. The sort of story where Rey justifies trying to keep from falling for her friend with benefit.

The Mail Order Bride by Lazypadawan : Rated Expilicit, Wild west-Au, Fluff and Angsty, Shoot outs, Babies, Eventual Happy Ever After, Not Beta Read, Compeleted.

Rey Niima was a lonely school teacher in 1870s California until she spotted an ad from a miner seeking a bride. She and Ben Solo connect through letters then he proposes and Rey leaves it all behind to join him. But on the way there a gang of masked desperadoes hold up her stagecoach. The wedding goes forward but little does Rey know that her new husband isn't what he seems to be.

Note's: Fun fact the plot is based on a story from the 1800's of a mail order bride. However this one has a happier ending. It's a rather fun adventure.

Modern Au's

Baby Sister by Zoey_Writes : Rated Explicit, Underage, sibling sex, Incest, pregency, mentions of abortion, loss of parents. Ben and Rey are half siblings. Cheating Han Solo. Completed.

Shortly before Ben's sixteenth birthday, he learns that his father has another child, a daughter named Rey, who will be coming to live with them following her mother's death. At first, he hates her, then he tolerates her, and then...

Notes: A whole lot of family drama and the author actually handles the side characters really well. I really got into the history of Leia's family. Ben in this story is the main pov and he actually is rather sweet. The budding friendship between Rey and Ben was refreshing before they actually started to get together. But everything is pretty realistic.

Sometimes a gift is more by Blueyedgurl : Rated Explicit, Incest, Ben and Kylo are twins, Sibling incest, Uncle/niece, parent/child, Mild dubious consent, On Going fic. Locked fic must have an AO3 account.

Rey's Uncle Kylo gives her a bear for her 18th birthday. One squeeze Kylo's voice sing the song he likes to tease her with. A few more and it vibrates...it probably isn't all it does.

Note's: There is some Ben and Kylo stuff going on. It also hasn't been updated for a good while but if you don't mind the four chapters are great.

Smug by infinitegalaxies : Rated Expilict, best friends older brother, Rey's 18, Ben 21, switching POV, Compeleted.

Rey’s crush on her best friend’s brother is finally reciprocated, for better or worse.

Note's: Would have been straight up smut had the happy ever after at the end made it into a rather sweet little tale.

Quija by majesticllamalady : Rated Expilict, Graphic depictions of violance, Major Character death, Rape/ Non-con, Paranormal, dead dove do not eat, Demon Kylo, Horror, No happily ever after, Compeleted.

Rey and her friends have taken up what was supposed to be a harmless hobby of ghost hunting. Tired of coming up empty handed, Poe brings along a Ouiji board this time to encourage a spirit to come forward. Only it wasn't a harmless spirit trapped in the home they've unleashed, but a demonic entity that's finally broken free of its bonds. The demon only wants Rey, and it will have her, but not before it's finished playing with the young college students for daring to mess with paranormal.

Note's: Really a dark Reylo if your into that. It wasn't tagged but I think there is an element of mind fuckry with one dream scene. (Not fuckary in terms of sex but just mind games.) There is such a visual and mood of fear about it. I take it out for Halloween or when I need a good scare. It's only five chapters but gets to the point.

[circleofbirds]

looks like Anders finally left Katatonia... not unexpected at all given his absence from recent tours and increasing absence from their songwriting credits, but damn if it doesn't feel like the end of an era after his 32 years in the band.

i got into Katatonia in the first place because i'd followed Anders from his solo black metal project Diabolical Masquerade (aided by the legendary Dan Swanö) many years ago, and his first album Ravendusk in My Heart is still one of my favorite BM records of all time. it's a shame i never got to see him play live with Jonas.

[triste-guillotine]

DIABOLICAL MASQUERADE “Nightwork” Full-length album 1998 (’...Darkness hiding behind those of black path of clad. Darkness standing in arches of hell fire ream. Meddles creating an end pushed rhythm of the time. Meddles spilling the blood of the burning awn...’)

1. Rider on the Bonez 2. Dreadventurouz 3. The Zkeleton Keyz to the Dead 4. Thiz Ghoultimate Omen 5. All Onboard the Perdition Hearze ! 6. The Eerie Obzidian Circuz 7. Haunted by Horror 8. Cryztalline Fiendz  (bonus track)

https://peaceville.bandcamp.com/album/nightwork

[cavegirl66]

"Is Arestes e S'urtzu Pretistu" Sorgono, Sardinia

Is Arestes and S’Urtzu Pretistu  of Sorgono

Man has always paid his attention to the events that Mother Nature decreed and decrees with cyclical rhythms that can be defined as eternal, and to which he has tied his fears but also his hopes making it a religion towards a god to whom he turned: Dionisio Mainoles, (Maimone in Sardinia) divinity of vegetation and ecstasy, to whom abundant rains were asked so that the earth would bear its fruits. The name of Maimone in Sardinia has remained linked to springs and watercourses. This God, source of life for men and beasts, was highly venerated by shepherds and farmers. In Sorgono and in other inhabited centers when the calends of January arrived, ritual manifestations were held in his honor, representing the most salient moments of his death.

The rite is very ancient, certainly pre-Christian.

The ritual representation took place on the calends of January: men dressed in skins, loaded with animal bones, with their faces blackened by burnt cork or covered with a black mask, capture and sacrifice the predestined victim, who is generally presented in the form of a goat, bull, deer, wild boar, all hypostases or manifestations of Dionysus who manifested himself in these aspects. Whatever the most remote origin of this manifestation, it is certain that in the writings of Saint Augustine (4th century AD) there is certain testimony to the existence of wild and animalistic masks: "What sensible person could believe that there are sane individuals who disguise themselves as deer, changing their clothes for those of beasts? Some wear sheep and goat skins, others put animal heads on their heads, happy and exultant, if they manage to transform themselves into bestial forms so much so that they no longer seem men" and then: "they dress in bestial clothes similar to goats and deer to make themselves in the image of God, and having made themselves similar they make a diabolical sacrifice". Around the 4th century, therefore, there existed feral or animal masks, a tenacious continuation of evident pagan manifestations. Masquerading in the guise of animals appeared to the Fathers of the Church and the representatives of the Christian cult as a sacrilege. In fact, the Council of Auxerre (585 AD) issued a provision that prohibited these ritual manifestations: non licet kalendis ianuarii vetola aut cervolo facere vel strenas diabolicus. Despite the work of evangelization by the ecclesiastical orders, ritual ceremonies were repeated over the centuries, even though many people, despite having converted to Christianity, disguised themselves in animal forms when the calends of January arrived, re-proposing the ancient propitiatory rituals even though they were aware that this ceremony came from a pagan religion.

Even in the 18th century, according to the testimonies of the Jesuit friar Bonaventura Demontis Licheri of Neoneli and the Jesuit father Giovanni Vassallo, these ancestral rites were still celebrated. In many towns in central Sardinia, propitiatory rituals with human sacrifices were practiced on the calends of January. This fact is not surprising if one considers the centuries-old isolation and the resistance of the populations of the internal areas of Sardinia to change their beliefs, as well as the agro-pastoral economy linked to the agricultural years and the spectre of drought. In his writings "Attobios a Santu Mauru d'Ennarzu" (poem in the Sardinian language) on the occasion of the celebrations in honor of San Mauro Abate in Sorgono (Santu Mauru de i Dolos) on January 15, 1767, he describes in a surprisingly clear way the representation and dynamics of the pagan ritual and of those who participate in it. The sanctuary of San Mauro, a few kilometers from Sorgono, stands at the foot of Monte Lisai in a valley rich in evidence of the Neolithic and Nuragic periods; a short distance away is the sacred complex of Bidu 'e Concas with its 200 menhirs (3000 BC) and a place of worship for the populations in the pre-Nuragic and Nuragic periods.

Licheri calls the masks “Sos Arestes” the rustic, the wild ones.

Sos Arestes, they wear a goat, sheep and cow skin, on their backs they carry animal bones, their head is covered by a cork headdress called su casiddu, completely lined with woolly skin and surmounted by goat, fallow deer, red deer and bull horns, with their faces and arms blackened by soot produced by the burnt cork. They are armed with mighty sticks, wooden clubs and pitchforks, they move with a haughty attitude, causing with little jumps the apotropaic sound of the bones tied to their shoulders, some of them are equipped with an ox horn, which they play for the entire duration of the ceremony.

They advance in a group in an apparently disorderly manner, miming clashes evoking fights or dances typical of the courtship of goats or animals present, in reality these are ancient propitiatory rites to solicit the beneficial rain. The elderly Shepherds claimed that when the goats clashed, the weather was about to change and turn to rain.

At the head of the procession one or two Arestes hold the victim destined for sacrifice tied with a chain: S'Urtzu, a man wearing an entire sheep, goat or bull skin, with the headdress surmounted by majestic bull horns but who unlike the Arestes, has no bones on his shoulders and will be beaten and prodded by all the Arestes of the group.

The ritual of sacrifice culminates with the killing of S'Urtzu, struck to death by the sticks, pitchforks and wooden clubs of the Arestes.

At the signal of the pack leader, the Arestes perform thirteen jumps around the victim, now defenseless, the number of lunar phases in a year, punctuated by the sound of the ox horn; at the new signal of the pack leader, who in the meantime holds the victim tied to the center of the circle, they remove their particular headdress, highlighting their face blackened by the soot of the burnt cork.

Under pressure from the church, the rite performed by adults has been progressively reduced to a banal masquerade whose true meaning had been lost.

In Sorgono, the last testimonies of men dressing up in animal skins and with the entire head of a bull date back to the years 1925-30.

Some old people today still remember and tell of men dressed in sheepskin who chained a man dressed in cowhide with the entire head of a bull on their head who tried to wriggle and resist.

A repetition, a continuation devoid of meaning. It is done because it is known. In the repetition of the ancient rites of the early 1900s, the deep, internal, original and truly significant reason is now missing. A tradition is maintained, a way of acting is preserved, but the way of being, the true essence has now transformed. The Church, the innovations, the changing isolation of these areas, the arrival of external elements, often even to Sardinia, in the administration, in the control of the territory, in the management of religious matters, the arrival of a more widespread culture with a slow but inexorable increase in schooling, produce a physiological and normal abandonment of what was linked to antiquity, to myth and legend. The cultural transition from rite to myth is also marked by the carnivalization (in a playful and ludic sense) of a rite. This transition occurs only when the rite has lost all contact and all meaning with the social life of the community that expresses it. Only when many of those who are part of the same community no longer recognize what was a founding segment of the common identity, and only then, that segment "falls" or "expires" at a playful level and then disappears completely.

[lesdeuxmuses]

Diabolical Masquerade - Nightwork (Peaceville, 2014)

[wretchedsums]

who: open; 1/5 where: the masquerade [part II]

He's a long ways off when the Reardon man makes his big display, gloving a man's hunter mark off and tossing him into the midst of a pack of hungry vampires. The scent of blood that fills the air afterwards is not lost on him, nor is it unwelcome, but, well, he's not about to fight his way into the middle of a moshpit like that.

Still; incredibly entertaining in the least, worth of applause, in both the literal and figurative sense, as much as he might hate to admit it.

"Fucking diabolical, that guy." He says with a clap, and leans over to whoever it is next to him. "Couldn't have done it better myself. That's how you send a message."

Maybe he's feeling all the hooch and the drugs - enough to kill a normal man, just enough for him to be blissfully carefree and detached from the horrors of it all.

[wakeupandsmellthecarcass]

Trying to search for bands with common names is so annoying! Searching for a band like Diabolical Masquerade for example is easier because they have a unique name, but bands like Cathedral or Blood are harder because you have to search "Cathedral doom metal" or something like "Blood band" manually.

(I still think about the suffocation incident)

[day-mark]

dishonored was my hyperfix for a long time, I own the lore books and I have it all recorded in my head so you've unlocked something in me..... manhunt!Dream especially is sooo Corvo

the outsider is my fave character so I selfishly want it to be GeorgeHD because I love that idea, and Patches as Emily just makes sense. the lore is just that the Outsider always gets bored of his chosen after a while and so Daud was the fave for a long time, but now it's Corvo and he likes him waaaay more (ofc Dream would be GeorgeHD's favourite)

For George, I absolutely love the idea of him being Daud because I think that subverts expectations in a way that's really fun, but can I propose Sapnap as Daud instead..... he could have Daud's redemption arc when he realizes that he fucked up killing the empress, and instead turns to protecting Dream and Patches from the shadows, doing the hard thing because someone has to. The Whalers could even be Team Mafia!!

what if instead of Emperor!George being killed, Daud!Sapnap just made it look like an assassination, and took him captive instead? Could even train him up to secretly be one of the Whalers, when he shows George that all of the Loyalists were planning to kill him and take over the city and eradicate the working class

lady boyle's last party is easily the best mission. getting to just wander around a masquerade was sooo much fun.

LORE BOOKS ?! omg i need it. ok well i found the pdf on reddit already and u best believe im about to read through it all, owning it hits different but THIS IS DIABOLICAL HELLO . surely amazon is just joshing me and a physical version for this decade old book exists at a reasonable price 🙂

but omg team mafia as the whalers is actually SUCH a good idea, thatd be so awesome. sapnap leading them is a fun new spin considering that 'canonically' he joins their group, not the other way around. would be super fun to play with!! and also the sapnap v dream hostility is soo fun to explore bc yknow, sapnap has been with dream since they were kids! literal ride or die! so having an au where they dont start out as friends is some great subverting expectations too

ahh daud is a really interesting character so having both george and sapnap potentially fill his role and being able to create different dynamics with dream despite being the 'same character' is awesome.

im really fascinated with the idea of exploring the 'meaner' parts of georgein aus, like with daud here the potential for ruthlessness and bitterness over losing the outsiders favor (i dont remember if daud actually gaf that much but again, interesting to explore with george/cgeorge regardless. whenever i make aus i feel like im pulling from a mix of cc, c, and manhunt lol).

the dynamics that can come from daud!sapnap and !emperor george is also a great idea! lolol kinda reminding me of the trip they recently took where sapnap is closest w team mafia and george 'joins' second kinda. i do love messing around with their early dynamic of fighting and specifically for dreams attention 😭 though in this case itd only be george that really cares about dream in the beginning, so i imagine theres genuine hostility between them at first, cause like, 'why did you just kidnap me and my daughter wtf' even if it was for nobler reasons than hed initially think. and also considering that dream would be executed in this scenario 😭