Diamanda Galás announces remastered release of 1996 classic album 'The Divine Punishment'

Out on June 10th is the remastered 1986 classic album “The Divine Punishment” by Diamanda Galás. Released via Galás’s own label Intravenal Sound Operations it will be available on CD and digitally, with the vinyl version to be released later in 2022. The release was remastered by mastering engineer Heba Kadry working from the original mixes by London-based producer/composer Dave Hunt.

The first album in her ‘Masque of the Red Death’ trilogy, The Divine Punishment was a response to the AIDS epidemic, and a milestone in Diamanda Galás’s artistry and activism. On 30 June 1986, the same day that Diamanda Galás’s “The Divine Punishment” was released, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Georgia’s so-called sodomy law in Bowers v. Hardwick, criminalising consensual sex between men. At the time, about 15,000 people were known to have died of AIDS in the U.S. alone, with little government acknowledgement besides suggestions to quarantine homosexuals on island colonies. By the end of 2021, the number of AIDS deaths globally would exceed 36 million.

Listen to “This Is The Law Of The Plague” right below.

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