Moonspell

Once upon a time, goth rock meant a bunch of vampire-looking people playing new wave-y music. However, the times they are a changin', as goth metal has arguably become the most common and popular goth-related music circa the early 21st century. And the proof is in the emergence of such acts as Moonspell. A certified sensation back home in Portugal (where their albums reach the top of the charts, and they even won an MTV Europe award for Best Portuguese Act), the quintet has certainly carved a niche for themselves, and continue to riff and growl away on their 2008 release, Night Eternal. If you were to erase the goth keyboards from the proceedings, Moonspell would sound like your average extreme metal band. But with the keys added, Moonspell are one of the few bands of the genre that is not entirely one-dimensional…

Moonspell's sixth full-length release again finds the long-running Portuguese quintet producing heavily atmospheric metal that owes as much to Sisters of Mercy as to Black Sabbath. The songs on Darkness and Hope generally emphasize the overall mood over songwriting hooks, but there are some memorable moments, such as the streamlined "Devilred" and the darkly metallic "Rapaces." Splitting the difference between Type O Negative and Tiamat, Moonspell achieves both threatening ferocity and stately grace.

O Negative, Tiamat, Sisters of Mercy, and sixth album The Antidote finds the Portuguese group existing in its own unique, creative headspace. Bolstered by a thoroughly enveloping production - which carefully places lush, gothic textures into harsh, metallic realms, and vice versa - and accomplished, memorable songwriting, The Antidote is easily the group's most ambitious effort. The band utilizes a rich sonic palette that smartly balances melodic hooks, keyboard textures and an impressively strong foundation of steely guitar riffs; moody, rousing numbers ("Capricorn at Her Feet," "Crystal Gazing," "The Southern Deathstyle") mingle with lengthy, spacious excursions ("Lunar Still," "As We Eternally Sleep on It") and exemplary fist-pumping anthems that toe the line between the black/death metal grit and commercial sheen ("In and Above Men," "A Walk on the Darkside")…

Moonspell continues to delve into slow, Gothic doom-metal on Sin/Pecado, with occasional samples and electronic percussion popping up in the atmospheric arrangements. Still, the band has not yet quite recaptured the spark of their debut, Wolfheart.
2019 Deluxe version with 3 bonus tracks.

Moonspell is approaching their 30th anniversary as a band more ambitiously and stronger than ever. Hermitage – the gothic metal pioneers‘ 13th studio album – was recorded, mixed and mastered by Jaime Gomez Arellano at the Orgone Studios in the UK.

One of the more worthy black metal releases of the early '90s was Moonspell's Under the Moonspell, a five-track EP that signaled to many extreme metal fans that Portugal had birthed their own extreme metal band. With the release becoming increasingly difficult to find in intervening years, the Moonspell lads decided to celebrate the EP's 13-year release anniversary by re-recording it, resulting in the release of 2007's Under Satanae. But this proves to be a "new and improved" version of the group's early classic, as re-recordings of other rare tracks from before their 1995 full-length, Wolfheart, are included as well. While tracks such as "Tenebrarum Oratorium" and the beautifully titled "Goat on Fire" sound rather run of the mill by 2007 standards, keep in mind that when these tracks were first released, there was certainly not an overabundance of extreme metal bands that sounded like this…

Alpha Noir is a welcome revisit to the band’s early works and probably their most ferocious sounding since their debut, Wolfheart (1995). This is due in no small part to the guitar work. Throughout this album the guitars offer face melting riffs and wild soloing that lasts more than a few seconds here and there. Additionally, there is a ton of lead work happening at all times and it just makes everything bigger and angrier. Not unlike brethren Paradise Lost and Amorphis though, Moonspell dig deep and craft a much heavier album than anyone expected.

Portuguese pioneers Moonspell first brought the dark flames to their native country - and then set the rest of the world aflame with milestones such as Irreligious or Night Eternal. Indeed eleventh studio album Extinct erects another monument to sundowns and those dark hours and lets Fernando Ribeiro's sombre vocals collide with modern riffing, blackened melodies and operatic grandeur. Always one step ahead of the rest, always resisting all genre boundaries!

Portugal's Moonspell has quickly evolved into one of the major players in the European goth-metal scene, and their fourth album, The Butterfly Effect, finds them pushing the boundaries of metal into strange and exciting new directions. Led by vocalist Fernando Ribeiro's breathy baritone, the group could be likened to a European Type O Negative but with a greater talent for genre-bending experimentation. Following the basic blueprint set by Tiamat's hugely influential Wildhoney album, The Butterfly Effect marries violent, down-tuned guitar riffs, eerie synthesizer passages, and esoteric lyrical themes (part science fiction, part anti-Christianity). And though it's sheer breadth doesn't allow for as cohesive a picture as previous efforts, the album features a number of exceptional tracks…

Moonspell continues to delve into slow, Gothic doom-metal on Sin/Pecado, with occasional samples and electronic percussion popping up in the atmospheric arrangements. Still, the band has not yet quite recaptured the spark of their debut, Wolfheart.