Moonspell
Memorial

THE REVIEW

Many have praised this "Memorial" by Moonspell, even making unlikely comparisons with the band's first two albums "Wolfheart" and "Irreligious," which, in the opinion of this writer, remain absolutely unmatched.

Honestly, I find no point of contact with the albums mentioned. This "Memorial" could be a good black metal album, but it is urgent not to compare it with two albums (especially 'Wolfheart') that made the history of 90s gothic metal. The most striking negative aspect is Fernando Ribeiro's voice. I find the comparison made by many music critics who have praised the singer for a supposed return to the depth of the early works' vocals to be decidedly wrong. Nothing could be more misleading. In this "Memorial," Ribeiro primarily uses growl singing, which may indeed be the most glaring weakness of Moonspell's latest effort.
Growl, to be clear, was also present in the first two albums, but to a much lesser degree, much less accentuated and alternated with more, so to speak, relaxed parts where the frontman's voice reached its maximum beauty and depth. A depth which, in my opinion, cannot be found in even the slightest trace in "Memorial".

Musically, the situation is not without criticism either. The songs tend to all sound alike, partly due to Ribeiro's monotone and repetitive singing. We are faced with songs utterly devoid of the epic and gothic atmospheres of their beginnings. Even the characteristic that made me appreciate them in "Wolfheart" (considered by fans and critics to be one of the indisputable masterpieces of the genre), which, in my opinion, differentiated them from other bands dedicated to the same genre, namely the blend of gothic elements, thus cold, and ethnic, warmer elements, is a distant memory.
This too has led Moonspell to constantly regress over time until they arrived at today's, in my opinion, mediocre "Memorial," which unfortunately represents one of the most evident current examples of the decay that gothic in metal is undergoing.

After all, there must be a reason if at the end of listening to the album, none of the 13 tracks that comprise it remain in my mind, a fact perhaps also due to the heaviness (understood as the difficulty of absorbing the listening) that it caused me. Perhaps only “Finisterra” is enjoyable, but that's about it.

In conclusion, I have nothing left to say except that the path Moonspell has taken towards an increasingly pronounced black metal does not convince me at all, and I much prefer bands like 'Katatonia,' who have evolved towards a form of gothic rock contaminated by Toolian influences, or 'The Gathering,' who, with their latest "Home," have settled on very relaxed psychedelic gothic pop sounds.