Diamanda Galás has announced her first new album in two years. It’s called Broken Gargoyles and it’s due out August 26 via Intravenal Sound Operations. The LP consists of two lengthy songs, “Mutilatus” and “Abiectio,” which she composed in 2020 during the beginning of the pandemic.
Technically, Diamanda Galás recorded “Mutilatus” back in 2012 and 2013 in collaboration with recording engineer Kris Townes. The song contains segments from Georg Heym’s poems “Das Fieberspital” and “Die Dämonen der Stadt.” The second part of Broken Gargoyles, “Abiectio,” draws inspiration from the Heym poems “Der Blinde,” “Der Hunger,” and the last verses of “Das Fieberspital.”
The Broken Gargoyles’ CD will come with a 24 page booklet featuring four Heym poems in both German and English, four paintings by Galás, and essays by Dr. Julia Meier of the Kestnergesellschaft Hannover and Luca Zanchi from the upcoming book Gorgon in The Blue Room: Diamanda Galás and the Divine Monster of Grief. It also includes photos of Galás, the Broken Gargoyles installation at the Kapellen Leprosarium Hannover from 2021, and “facially mutilated soldiers during WWI.”
Broken Gargoyles follows Galás’ 2020 record De-formation – Piano Variations: Das Fieberspital (The Fever Hospital) as well as her 2017 studio albums All the Way and At Saint Thomas the Apostle Harlem. Over the pandemic, Galás also reissued her self-titled album and her debut The Litanies of Satan.
Broken Gargoyles:
01 Mutilatus
02 Abiectio
