Diamanda Galás composes violently compassionate music about suffering. Her late-1980s Masque of the Red Death Trilogy focuses on AIDS, which killed her brother, Philip-Dimitri, in 1986, while other projects delve into the oppressive Greek Junta and the Armenian, Assyrian, and Anatolian Genocides. The 67-year-old goth icon performs less harrowing stuff, too—a hard-grooving 1994 collaboration with Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, a bevy of brilliant takes on blues standards. Yet at her best, Galás sharpens her cutting sense of empathy, slices open difficult subject matter, and approaches it from inside: Her 1991 dirge for HIV’s most deadly era, Plague Mass, might be the heaviest live record ever made. Ultimately, Galás’ haunted ritual, like all of her releases, is a ceremony of tenderness.