Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of man? No, not the Shadow, but only David Bowie, whose dire prognosis of life on this planet is enough to send you cringing away in fear. Diamond Dogs is a concept album with a dismal futuristic view of life after some unspecified holocaust, when peoplekind has become deformed and half-animal, and the world as we know it no longer exists.

"I'm sorry, I'm not protected for this fantasy," sings Bowie in the title cut, a straightforward British rocker which owes more to Hunky Dory than to his more recent stuff (although the rest of DD tends toward The Man Who Sold The World)…. Bowie makes you grit your teeth and strain to adapt yourself to his H. Bosch-to-H. Ellison horror fantasies, which get more frightening and depressing as the album progresses.

An archetypal Brechtian torch song with cool trad...