Most people have never heard of a band called Devil Doll, or if they have they probably associate the name with a completely different, noirish band from the USA. The Devil Doll I'm talking about is an Italian-Slovenian art rock project headed up by a man known only as “Mr. Doctor.” Until 2007, nobody really knew who Mr. Doctor was, though he has since been identified as a Slovenian man of Italian descent named Mario Panciera. Many of the members of the band didn't even meet each other for a long time, as Mr. Doctor would record parts of the music in Italy and other parts in Slovenia.

I don't know of any way to definitively classify what type of band Devil Doll is, although their music has been described as a type of symphonic metal. Whatever it is, it's very strange. Mr. Doctor speaks some of the lyrics and sings others in an operatic voice, with themes such as old horror movies, decadent Roman emperors, murder, and doorways opening to alternate dimensions. The total effect is the rarest of all things- a genuinely original artistic creation.

One of the band's few albums, “The Mark of the Beast,” was never released except for a single copy. When pressed for an explanation, Mr. Doctor asserted that the work was actually a painting and not an album at all- even though it was.

The classified ad used to recruit musicians for Devil Doll contained the following words, which may be taken as a manifesto of the band's unique body of work: “A man is less likely to become great the more he is dominated by reason: few can achieve greatness – and none in art – if they are not dominated by illusion.”