Moonspell
Night Eternal

THE REVIEW

They return. The nightmares always return. Sometimes you recognize their outlines, sometimes you don't. They have shifting profiles, and sometimes you just can't understand what the edges are that delineate them. You cling to few and tenuous permanent certainties. Sometimes not. As in the case of Moonspell.
This band has truly enjoyed, time after time and with each release, confusing their fans and listeners. I imagine Moonspell fans: they never know which saint to pray to, what style and words to use, according to which criteria to categorize, what approach to take with each of their statements. They are certainly insecure and frightened. For sure, always captivated by the music of these four Portuguese. Four plus the bassist of the moment, who, between one Amorphis record and another, even has the luxury of collaborating with other big names.

But Moonspell is like that. They return shortly after a collection of their greatest hits (I'm talking about "The Great Silver Eye", which couldn't have been more meager, since it didn't have a single new track on the lineup) and a refined and cruel reissue of their early songs ("Under Satanæ"). Even those they published when they still called themselves "Morbid God", not really thinking they themselves had to achieve such substantial success as they have since followed.

But here we are today instead. And we are here to give some impressions on this brand new "Night Eternal", the group's latest effort, and which, to tie back to the above, I'm sure will once again give a hard time to those who thought Moonspell's harmonic deviations were taking a more perilous, breakneck path compared to "Memorial", their last completely new album.

It's not so. At least, at first glance you are deceived. The songs aren't that erratic and laden with that bestial sensuality that gave the band so much fortune in the past. The sounds are mostly pumped and powerful. Driven by anger rather than true empirical sensuality; they make for a good listening figure at maximum volume in the player. But the common thread, which is the real key to navigating the anthropomorphic universe of Fernando Ribeiro's band, is very much present and audible: that gothic and decadent vein, those heavy and brutal guitars that at a certain point "detach" from their tight feral mounts to stand out in the sharp turn, softened by epic choirs, and the singer's beastly growls, are always there.
Only, they travel at a speed and according to a scheme designed and produced so that only after many listens can they be well understood.
After two or three times of doing and undoing, you are struck with dismay. How is it possible that Moonspell fell off so much? Then it was true that their vein had irreparably dried up!
After ten or more listens, though, your face lights up, and you begin to understand something about "Night Eternal". Of course, Fernando's voice alone doesn't allow for a flop and could even resurrect the dead. The aggression derived from their Black Metal roots is there purposefully to serve as a lure. But that's not the focus on which the album's coordinates move.
Blaspheming, it could be said that it's a clever mix between the dark "The Antidote" and the fierce "Memorial". But it's reductive to think of it that way. It's only good for blaspheming. Yet that's the sensation. Just listen to "Night Eternal" itself: a steamroller rhythm section that doesn't allow for any melodic prejudices, but, under it all, indulges in pairing sulfurous aggression with the epic, leaden and thick keyboards that peek through like a sliver of light. "At Tragic Heights" is further evidence of this. Besides, in my opinion, being the most successful track on the entire lineup. The one that, while retaining a terribly caustic but at the same time romantic soul, doesn't yield to the "Industrial" temptations that pop up here and there among the tracks.

Here's another novelty. The industrial ruminations, which, if we weren't talking about Moonspell, wouldn't be news in themselves. And yet we are talking about Moonspell, and whatever they play, you are led to distinguish from the other.
"Scorpion Flower" was the song that the band most broadcasted to the four winds, presenting it as the single/symbol of the entire album. And in this I must say that they have taken a big blunder. Agreed, it takes advantage of the collaboration of Anneke van Giersbergen, the sensual former singer of the Gathering, which is already a point of curiosity, but, I assure you, it doesn't go beyond that. The song, for which the video has already been released (and in some ways is truly embarrassing: seeing Ribeiro striking poses like a modern Bela Lugosi as a vampire is quite funny), is the most affected stereotype that Moonspell could have provided. With the usual ingredients: sensual voice, bone-crushing riff, two-part hiccupped choir, then again sensual voice, then again little choir, and the liver is already down the drain. Logical, we're still talking about a classy track, how could it be otherwise. But there's better on the album. No doubt about it.

After the first part, let's say "shot" into the ears to remind everyone who we are talking about, we arrive at the second part, more intricate and surely more difficult to appreciate on first listen. "Moon in Mercury", the track most linked to the Portuguese's past, this one without too many changes and gothic smudges, that gives way to blind and fierce fury; "Here is the Twilight" which moves instead on more epic tracks and where the mark of the keyboards is more strongly evident, and "Dreamless (Lucifer and Lilith)" which shifts the attention and recollection to a much underestimated album like "Darkness and Hope", reassessing its shadows and emanating sensations that seemed almost a song discarded from the lineup at the time. The real pleasure, however, comes at the end, when encountering, first "Spring of Rage" and then, especially "First Light". The former begins with a well-executed and scraping attack, then opens into a melodic and sensual melange, precisely as I have always stated, "bestial", then suddenly disconnects, even supported by full and morose guitars, in a rush of adrenalized wickedness. Gratuitous, a bit self-serving. Just as Moonspell have always accustomed us to. The latter instead moves on calmer, certainly gothic and dark paths, and will delight everyone. I'm sure of it. Do you recall "Full Moon Madness", the song that wrecks the fans at every concert? Well, this one stands as a natural continuation and shows us a band in extraordinary form, from whatever point of view you look at it: the parts are overturned and they are lavishly infused with extraordinary versatility and elegance, sensations and moods that perhaps no one remembered anymore. Wickedness, satanic whispers, chords lost in the dark, sensuality, sensuality, sensuality. 

What are you looking for in Moonspell?
If you don't know, then you'll like this album, otherwise step back and listen to their older works. Surely you'll find some that you'll like more than this one. But I know well what I'm looking for in this band, and with this album I can say that I am abundantly satisfied.