Diabolical Masquerade was a Swedish one-man musical project. All music is written and played by Katatonia guitarist Blakkheim (Anders Nyström) who wanted to have a band where he could compose more extreme music whilst Katatonia were exploring more mellow moods. The music leans heavily on avant-garde melodic black metal with some death metal and thrash metal influences. Blakkheim wanted to experiment more with song structure, theme and composition. This is most notably seen on his last project as Diabolical Masquerade called "Death's Design". This album is conceived as the soundtrack to a nonexistent Swedish horror movie, with 61 tracks broken up into 20 movements, each with a unique feel and theme. While Death's Design is a more extreme album than any released by Katatonia in recent years, it also includes many passages featuring various genres and styles, experimenting with progressive rock, progressive metal, ambient, classical music, and rhythmic, percussio