Moonspell
Wolfheart

THE REVIEW

The so-called Gothic Metal is undoubtedly one of the most successful genres in recent years within the Metal scene. However, one thing must be clarified: by Gothic Metal, I certainly don't mean those works that are churned out every year on the market with questionable results, merely rehashing the same banal formula (female vocals to the point of nausea, melancholic yet not excessively so melodies, simplistic choruses, and so on). Gothic Metal is the fusion of extreme Metal (Doom or Black) with dark, folk, or indeed gothic elements and is a genre that reached its peak potential during the five-year period of 95-00.

"Wolfheart" by Moonspell is indeed one of the top 4-5 albums that this genre has ever produced. Combining the charm of Portuguese folk music with Black Metal and dark elements, Fernando Ribeiro and his band created in the blessed year of 1995 this milestone; an album that is truly magical and intense. The dark and melancholic atmospheres are present right from the beginning with "Wolfshade", which features, besides the already mentioned Black-styled riffs, some dreamy acoustic passages that really make you imagine being catapulted into a Portuguese woodland amidst wild nature.

The band can also hit hard when needed, and Ribeiro excellently alternates between growl and scream with his now-famous warm, baritone clean vocals: "Love Crimes" demonstrates this, a song often unjustly overlooked, where rapid and aggressive verses frequently transition to more gothic passages accompanied by female vocal choruses, concluding with a memorable keyboard work that crafts sweet and moving melodies. Our Portuguese musicians also showcase more typical Metal influences with "Of Dream And Drama (Midnight Ride)", which apart from the omnipresent keyboards, is an exhilarating and classic Metal ride.

After the interlude "Lua D'Inverno", which perfectly breaks the tension, it's time for "Trebaruna". This track is nothing more than a ballad of Portuguese Folk music which Moonspell have translated into a Gothic Metal version. The rhythm is, of course, tribal and hypnotic, Ribeiro captivates and enchants with his warm and emotional voice, and it will be difficult to resist dancing wildly while listening to this track.
The album enters its final and darkest part with the subsequent "Vampiria" and "An Erotic Alchemy". The first track is a gothic masterpiece, obsessive and unsettling in the first minutes and surprisingly aggressive in the middle section, concluding with one of the most majestic and redundant parts of the album. The second track, on the other hand, is supported by a series of well-designed keyboard melodies which, however, do not overshadow the guitar work, embodying the perfect and morbid alchemy mentioned in the title (and in my opinion, this track alone "created" hundreds of albums that have been released in the last 5 years...).

The album closes with the anthem, THE quintessential Moonspell song: the incredible "Alma Mater", perhaps their masterpiece. The wonderful main riff is the meeting point between the aggression of Metal and Portuguese folk, and the use of scream/growl here reaches stratospheric levels of perfection: wild, aggressive, rending.
The tension throughout the entire track is maintained at very high levels both in the already mentioned aggressive parts and in the cleaner, more tribal passages. The result is an epic, intense song that, together with the previous ones, delivers this "Wolfheart" to history in all its majesty, in all its pantheism, in all its folklore.

An album to own, which also, in the end, has a didactic value: it demonstrates how hundreds of thousands of copies still don't even come close to the original.