Moonspell
Memorial

THE REVIEW

There are albums that, despite being beautiful and easily digestible, inevitably fall into oblivion after a short time, only to be unearthed at some moment when you're looking for something "different" from the many, too many releases of an entire year.
Then there are others that, upon first listening, prove to be challenging and intricate, not very catchy and hardly digestible, but which, even after being forgotten for a certain period, return and manage to be appreciated to the best of their abilities. And this second example is what happens with "Memorial", the latest, and already highly sought-after, work of the Lusitanian band Moonspell.

Moonspell have an extraordinary, although controversial ability: that of making people fall in love with their music in a total and unwavering way for those who follow them, or of appearing detestable, boring, and pitiful to many others. And this also happened with this album. There are those who love it, have loved it, and will love it madly, and those who listened to it, were disgusted by it, and forgot it on the shelf cursing the friend who recommended it and made them buy it.

With Ribeiro's band and company, there are no half measures, and in this, they share the same fate as groups of the same caliber like Type 'O' Negative and others, and anyway, it always remains a fact that with every release, for better or worse, there is always much talk about it, and the anticipation for each of their publications is greeted with frenzied excitement and uncontrollable impatience by those who know them, whether because they are madly charmed by them, or because they are waiting for nothing more than to take them down, once again, with a sawed-off shotgun. Lately, the number of detractors, bolstered by past albums not exactly up to the band's standards, has increased significantly, but it must also be said that besides these, a compact swarm of new-hour fans has been created who have learned to appreciate them, and who, with the necessary patience and broad-mindedness, are also rediscovering their past masterpieces.

But let's be clear, if Moonspell for you is represented by those who played in "Sin/Pecado" or "The Butterfly Effect", then this "Memorial" will surely not please you. And there would be nothing else to say at this point. You could also close the review window (which is already present in the database, but which, in my opinion, is certainly too ungenerous). If, however, you love the primordial sounds between Black Metal and Gothic of "Wolfheart" and "Irreligious", then you won't be able to do without this album anymore, simply because it is an almost maniacal and sadistic concoction of anger, gloom, whispers, and powerful epic rides and fundamentally cruel in their irritated but never chaotic spur.
Although not a Black Metal album per se, it is filled in terms of atmosphere, even the most somber. However, the minimal production and the totally nihilistic and booming approach are missing, which here shows itself to be furious, but in doses thoroughly and wisely distributed, with a crystalline yet atrocious manner, and you certainly understand this by listening to, for example, a song like "Finisterra" with Ribeiro's scream vocals that have nothing to envy the champions of the Death/Black genre in terms of brutality, but rather demonstrate incredible and astonishing versatility, both in the most prevalent moments of brutality and razor-sharp metrics, and in the most intimate and hissing, dark, and decadent episodes, precisely in the Moonspell manner, and which can be appreciated in many instances.

Already this puts "Memorial" as a strong and generally appreciable album, if you then add a rhythmic section that remains essentially gothic while overworking and wandering into criminal and steamroller races (and the drum work here is a clear example) of several songs, then one can understand what the band's attitude in this new millennium is: no more contamination at all costs, no more experimentations that sometimes left you completely flabbergasted, but powerful and ear-splitting Heavy Metal, albeit adorned with the tribal trademark of the Moonspell machine, albeit filled with references to the past and their very particular way of drawing from the more pronounced influences of Black Metal from which the band inexorably derives.

"Memento Mori", "Blood Tells", "At Image of Pain", will leave you completely exhausted after listening to them, effortlessly switching from haunting and dread-inducing atmospheres, intense and uncompromising, to guitar corps heavy as tanks, and seductive, albeit acidic, turnabouts in the fiercest and most murderous Gothic, that, just to make it clear, is most influenced by the black edges of existence and the conflicting thought between being at the center of the universe, and not being or representing anything at all.
To catch your breath, however, there are many interludes recalling the tribal nature and Mediterranean belonging of Moonspell ("Sons of Earth", "Proliferation" though sui generis, "Mare Nostrum"), almost like our guys want to mock many Scandinavian black realities, as if to say: "Here we are, too, able to recreate certain atmospheres, even without declaring ourselves sons of Odin, even without living amidst polar ice and dizzying mountains..."

But if that still wasn't enough, and you were missing the exquisitely gothic and claustrophobic hook of Moonspell's music, then here you'll be served on bloody and baroque platters dipped in tar "Luna" and "Sanguine", in which you might imagine finding yourself in forests populated by shadows, or in the presence of tragedy personified, and unable to even say, in your defense, how ordinary, useless, and oppressive your life has been.

These, in the opinion of the writer, are the Moonspell many have been waiting for after a long time; in their most dazzling form, in their most pronounced attitude to annihilate, baffle, and destroy, with various compromises agreed, but always and nonetheless with the necessary ferocity that distinguished them already at their earliest attempts, leading them to compose masterpieces like "Alma Mater" and "Full Moon Madness".