Diabolical Masquerade is a Swedish avant-garde black metal band from Stockholm.
Diabolical Masquerade is a one man band of black metal. During his life, all the music was written and played by Blakkheim, the guitarist of Katatonia, whose real name was Anders Nyström, who wanted a band where he could compose more extreme music while Katatonia was exploring more melancholy atmospheres> .
The musical style of Diabolical Masquerade is close to experimental melodic black metal with some influences of death metal and thrash metal. Blakkheim sought to experiment more with song structure, themes, and composition. This can be seen on his latest album as a Diabolical Masquerade called Death's Design. This album is perceived as the soundtrack of a nonexistent Swedish horror film, with 61 tracks arranged in 20 movements, each with its own theme. Although Death's Design is a more extreme album than any of Katatonia's recent albums, it also includes many genres and styles, experimenting with progressive rock, progressive metal, ambient music, classical music, as well as rhythmic passages, based on percussion. Blakkheim worked with Dan Swanö on this project.
In September 2004, it is announced that Blakkheim had put the project on hold after not being able to find the necessary inspiration for a fifth album.
