Crimson Moonlight
The Covenant Progress

I remember a while ago, during a discussion about my review of Beecher, which I had introduced with an incipit about the GMG, it ended up with us talking about our religious faith (huh?), and at my exclamation “W GESU’ E W IL BLACK METAL!” dear Enriko told me that with this phrase I had won: a) his eternal sympathy b) the "incurable and certified madness" award 2005. Black metal and Christianity cannot coexist because the former was born precisely to combat the latter. It seems logical. But are you REALLY sure?

In response to the dark Norwegian Inner Circle movement, a movement even more underground and niche called “unblack metal” emerged, the response of Christians who love extreme sounds to the prevailing Satanism (and paganism) of those years, which had used metal as a favorite form of expression. The first to play it was the drummer of Mortification, perhaps the best-known Christian death metal band of that era, the Australian Anonymous (does it remind you of someone???) and his one-man band: Horde. "Hellig Usvart" was the first unblack metal album ever recorded. Icy atmosphere, cold and dark sounds, as in the best tradition of true Norwegian black metal, served as a backdrop to anti-Satanist lyrics that ridiculed the extremist ideas of the Inner Circle (and how can we forget the courageous defenders of faith, the Norwegians Antestor, who received serious death threats and didn't care, releasing their masterpiece "The Return of the Black Death"?). Thanks to Horde and "The only Lord Jesus Christ" are what we find in the booklet of "The Covenant Progress". Indeed, Crimson Moonlight, along with Lengsel, Kekal, and other bands of undisputed artistic and musical value, are among the best representatives of the entire modern unblack metal movement, which has been spreading rapidly worldwide in recent years.

Pure death/black metal: but a closer listen reveals deeper aspects. The first impression leaves no doubt. The usual extreme metal album. But then, delving deeper and deeper into this work, I discover aspects that I hadn't noticed before. I discover unexpected intensity, drama taken to the extreme, an anthem, a bold evocation of their ideal that surpasses self-destruction. An ideal, in this case, that is their faith. I was wrong. This is NOT the usual death/black metal album. This is a lived album, in the truest sense of the word. Pilgrim's voice is tearing, Gustav's drumming is as delicate as a stampede of wildebeest in The Lion King, and Per's guitar work is sharp as a scalpel in melody, yet crushing in the slow parts, with distortions "fattened" by a crystalline production. The scream rises upwards. The invocation to God to defeat the forces of evil. The more you listen, the more you get the feeling that the Crimson are fighting against a horde of demons, rather than playing. A very pleasant sensation. This is demonstrated by "The Pilgrimage", with a melodic whirlwind that ascends and descends a scale, intense, then violently penetrated by riffs that are nothing short of bloody, brutal, and full of wounds. The drums tear the skin to shreds and the voice defiles this mad race, while the most famous invocation of Jesus rises to the sky from Pilgrim's strident scream: "Father, Thy will be done, and not mine!". It's the other side of the coin. It's a different way of understanding black metal. Its intrinsic negativity takes aspects more related to its chaotic nature, the extremization of passions, and takes them to the extreme. Dark Christian themes and a violent faith need such a violent musical genre to be expressed (as Mortification also said), just as the soul's negativity for a world in ruin does not lead to nihilism and hatred (as in black metal) but to hope and the desire to fight to the end to change it.

And this work by Crimson Moonlight, their greatest work, does nothing but do justice to and express this concept at its best. A great band, a great album. W death/black metal, therefore, and praise to Jesus Christ. Whether you "believe" or not.