It was November 1st, Día de Los Muertos. The date was fitting for an artist whose work has consistently focused on themes of loss, trauma, and the marginalized dead, particularly those who died in plague, anger, and state-sanctioned isolation1. On this date, Diamanda Galás presented two offerings through her own Intravenal Sound Operations imprint. The first is ‘De-formation: Second Piano Variations,’ a new, definitive live recording. The second is a remastered reissue of her 1988 album, ‘You Must Be Certain of the Devil’. One is a work of internal, skeletal horror; the other, an external, vocal-led polemic.
For listeners who have followed her work, Galás is an important figure who gives voice to a specific kind of righteous fury. This dual release appears to be a deliberate curatorial act, forcing a connection between the institutional cruelties of 1912 and the hypocrisies of 1988. It serves as a reminder that the “plague mentality”—the urge to marginalize the sick—persists.
A Hushed and Reverent Brutality
The story of the new album begins in Paris. In the springtime of 2025, Galás gave her first live performance since 2018. The venue was not a typical club but the Bourse de Commerce—the Pinault Collection. The performance was staged in the basement auditorium, described by attendees as an intimate room that felt funereal. The atmosphere was reportedly hushed and reverent, with soft, candle-like lighting casting gothic shadows.
‘De-formation’ is a work for solo piano, based on a meticulously reworked score of her musical setting of Georg Heym’s 1912 German Expressionist poem, ‘Das Fieberspital’ (‘The Fever Hospital’). Heym’s poem was not metaphorical; it was a macabre vision drawn from his father’s work in a Berlin yellow fever clinic, documenting the pain and disfigurement of patients left to their delirium.
The music itself, captured on this new live recording, is an act of intentional aggression. It is not a gentle, romantic piano piece but a physical assault. In available excerpts, the sheer force of her playing is evident, with notes cracking as hammers hit metal. The composition is described as building a “cumulus of fury” before falling into near-silence, evoking the “fetid air” of the hospital ward.
The performance was part of a tribute to her late friend, the sonic pioneer Maryanne Amacher. In this context, Galás seemed to be performing a controlled exorcism, building a sonic cathedral for the ghosts of the Fieberspital and forcing a polite, candlelit audience to bear witness.
The Devil We Know, Sharpened by Time
From the anxious silences of the Paris basement, the listener is thrown into the eviscerating vocal alarm call of 1988. ‘You Must Be Certain of the Devil’ is not a piece of quiet reverence; it is a war album.
It is the final, blistering installment of her ‘Masque of the Red Death’ trilogy, a definitive artistic statement on the AIDS crisis. This work was not academic but was forged in personal loss and activism. Galás’s brother, the playwright Philip-Dimitri Galás, died of AIDS-related complications in 1986.
This album is the sound of that “fury and pain of real grief” and her work with ACT UP, which famously led to her arrest for protesting Cardinal O’Connor’s bigotry inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
‘Devil’ is a furious polemic against the moralistic, homophobic culture that cast the sick aside in the name of faith. Her genius was to seize the church’s language, twisting gospel spirituals like ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’ into blistering indictments. She weaponized sacred forms to expose profound cruelty, giving voice to a patient who, condemned as Satan, looks back and declares that if nothing else, “I can spit in the face of God.”
Now, this weapon has been re-calibrated. The 2025 remaster was handled by Heba Kadry, an engineer known for her work with Björk, Slowdive, and Chelsea Wolfe. Kadry is a master of texture, dread, and power, whose philosophy is to find the “goosebump feeling” and “bring that out more.” This remaster, which clarifies the album’s textural details, does not blunt the original’s industrial-pop rage. It focuses it, making the blade sharper and the unflinching gaze more direct.
A Unified Theory of Trauma
This dual release functions as Galás’s unified theory of trauma. ‘De-formation’ and ‘Devil’ are not separate works. They are two chapters of the same book.
The intellectual and emotional line is unbroken. The isolated, disfigured yellow fever patient in Heym’s 1912 poem is the direct ancestor of the facially mutilated WWI soldiers—the “broken gargoyles”—hidden from public view who became the subject of her 2022 album. Those soldiers are, in turn, the brothers of the AIDS patients of 1988, damned by the church and ignored by the state2.
The two albums are the internal and external landscapes of this shared trauma. ‘De-formation’ is the internal, pre-verbal scream: an instrumental work, the “solo piano skeleton” that embodies the “pain and delirium” of the victim in the locked room. ‘You Must Be Certain of the Devil’ is the external, articulated polemic: vocal-led, lyrical, and industrial, it is the furious rejection shouted at the gates, at the priests, and at the heavens. Together, they are the complete testimony.
Our High Priestess of the Unspeakable
In the gothic and avant-garde subcultures, Diamanda Galás is a foundational figure, often called a “dark queen” or “high priestess of goth.” Yet, she has famously, and correctly, rejected the label, stating, “I am not a Goth — I am a Greek.”
This was never a rejection of the subculture itself, but a vital correction of her source. While gothic rock is often defined by dark romanticism, tragedy, and melancholy, Galás bypasses the 1980s and traces her impulse directly to Greek tragedy. She is not simply a goth; she is an arch-goth. She is the root, not the branch.
I remember the first time I heard ‘The Litanies of Satan’ in a club, the multi-octave shriek cutting through the fog-machine haze. It was the sound of pure terror, like Baudelaire and Poe made flesh. Her voice is the articulation of an entire aesthetic, embodying resistance, elegance, and rage. Her work is a blueprint for a new generation of artists who use their voices to excavate trauma, most notably Lingua Ignota. She is the matriarch.
The Uncompromising Archive
These new releases are presented as serious artifacts. For the faithful, the remastered ‘You Must Be Certain of the Devil’ is being issued on vinyl with a printed Euro sleeve and a formidable 12”x24” poster. The CD edition includes a 9-page lyric book to accompany the poster, allowing listeners to hold the text in their hands. This entire restoration was overseen by Galás herself, remastered by Heba Kadry with vinyl lacquers cut by Paul Gold at Salt Mastering.
In contrast, ‘De-formation: Second Piano Variations’ is a direct transmission of that Parisian ritual. As a living document, it is fittingly delivered as a digital-only release, available exclusively on Bandcamp. This is not the 2020 improvised version; this is the definitive, meticulously revised score.
And the ritual is not over. The work is never static. Galás has already announced three live performances in Portugal for February 2026, bringing this fire to Lisbon’s Culturgest, Braga’s Theatro Circo, and Porto’s Casa da Musica.
The Work of Vengeance Is Never Done
We return to Día de Los Muertos. Diamanda Galás’s work has never been about passive mourning. It is about arming the dead. She has described her voice as “a weapon for your friends and a weapon against your enemies.” These two releases, separated by 37 years but united in purpose, are not artifacts. They are not nostalgia. They are live ammunition, polished and ready.
The eviscerating vocal alarm call of 1988 is just as necessary now. The fever hospitals are still being built. The dispossessed are still being cast aside. The work of vengeance, and of witness, is never done.
What was your first “holy terror” moment with Galás’s music, and how has her work shaped your understanding of rage and resistance?
References:
- Rienzo, Abigail. ‘Liminal Women: Diamanda Galás’ Plague Mass as a work of Death Midwifery.’ Tufts Digital Library, accessed November 1, 2025. ↩︎
- Kamikaze, Jones. ‘On Broken Gargoyles by Diamanda Galás,’ accessed November 1, 2025. ↩︎
Discussion