Moonspell - Night Eternal

\r\nSadness, desperation, sentiment. Melody, brutality, darkness. Shuddering and afterwards again sadness. More strong and more intense. Emotion that Moonspell returned with a masterpiece. Emotion that there are still bands that feel and the inhexaustible inspiration will always follow them. The waiting therefore finished and Night Eternal reached in our hands. Many people admit this to be the best album of the year. Personally I do not have no reason for disagreeing. Absolutely no one. No one absolutely. There have been many years since the last time that Moonspell managed to make me feel shudder with a studio album. \r\n

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\r\nOf course, their live appearances is more from creepy and their last albums were very appreciable, but to be honest up to today we did not have an album- recapitulation from the band from Portugal. And Night Eternal is a recapitulation of a brilliant and unique career, after it manages to combine the aggressiveness of Wolfheart, atmosphere of Irreligious, the dark of Darkness And Hope, the outbreaks of The Antidote and the mentality of Memorial. All these are included in an album and how could the result be described different from magical? \r\n

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\r\nNight Eternal is constituted by 9 diamonds which are written from a band that knows better from anyone to combine together magical/dark atmosphere with its unique roots, that are not other than Black Metal outbreaks of Under The Moonspell. A band that no matter how many many years would pass, will be presented to us tied up and mature, while it would always offer us songs taken form the deepest of the soul. Night Eternal therefore, is both melodic and extreme. It contains moments of brutality, but also of unstoppable melody. From sentimental feelings of Fernando Ribeiro in Dreamless, to the melodic/dark diamond that is named Scorpion Flower and afterwards to the extreme concerns of Portuguese through Moon In Mercury, which in deed contains one from the most astonishing refrain that we have ever heard from Fernando. Really I do not want even to imagine how this track will be on stage…\r\n

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\r\nFrom there and beyond, the hell is continued with tracks such as Night Eternal, Hers In The Twilight, At Tragic Heights, Spring Of Rage and First Light, which do not allow us to escape from the delirium of sounds and melodies that is offered to us generously, the sovereigns of darkness. Strong point this time are the riffs, on which it is based all the atmosphere and aggressiveness of the band, while beyond them, the amazing production and very careful drumming play their own role in each song. The keyboards and more general the symphonic parts, have been put in second place and are almost non-existent. Where they exist they function as background and they do not play an important role (apart from the import of At Tragic Heights and in certain other points). Vocals of Fernando are mainly brutal, with only few moments where it absorbs us with his unique melodic voice and goes us behind in the distant Irreligious but also to most recent Darkness And Hope.\r\n

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\r\nThe familiar voice that we hear in Scorpion Flower is no other than our loved one Anneke Van Giersbergen (ex-The Gathering, Agua De Annique) and I have to say that this duet is simply astonishing. I could speak for Night Eternal in a lot of paragraphs. However, I will prefer to stop, knowing that what exists into the album cannot be gathered in few lines because the magic from notes and the sentiment cannot be printed in written speech. Night Eternal is an album that you should hear in order to understand what it is. It is album that with great difficulty will be exceeded and it has all the backgrounds in order to remain classic. The sovereigns of darkness returned through depths of hell in order to drift us in their unique travel. Those who you have the guts to follow them, make the move and you won’t lose. That’s all from me, and the only that I have to say is my absolute respect. \r\n

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\r\nVasilis Mazaris\r\n

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\r\nTranslated by: Manos Maragos\r\n

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\r\n\r\nScorpion Flower
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