By: Phil Weller
Album Type: Full Length
Date Released: 16/6/2015
Label: Prosthetic Records
Take just one of those riffs, write an entire song around it, crown
it with an anthemic chorus and you feel they could be enormous. But that would
be betraying what the very foundation of what this band is, and so here we have
sprawling and deft compositions that gravitate within their own compelling
universe. They throw riffs and dextrous passages at you with abandon, each one
succeeded by another of the same, sterling quality.
The Moon Lit Our Path CD//DD//LP track listing:
1).
Carving in the Door
2).
The Moon lit our Path
3).
Descending into the Labyrinth
4).
Tomb of the Ancients
5).
Dawn Breaks over the Ruins
The Review:
‘The
Moon Lit Our Path’ isn’t so much an album as it is a
gothic tome. It’s a metamorphic tale which, upon every listen, conjures within
your mind different rancid characters and bloodied plots through their dark and
ethereal instrumentation. There are no words, but their music, which nods its
head most plainly to Opeth but also to other
black, death and progressive metal acts, paints a thousand of them all the
same.
That being said, as a consequence of the lengthiness
of each song and few repeating and obvious hooks within them, listening to the
album in its entirety can become a little overbearing. Yet, when the mood
suits, let one of these five slimy and guttural Lovecraftian soundscapes take
you away from this somewhat naff world of ours and into the murky depths of
your own sordid imagination. When that happens, it’s quite special.
There’s just something about the atmospheres of
these songs that bare similarities with the likes of HP Lovecraft, Poe and
Stoker for me. The shadowiness, the sense of dread, evil and horripilation is
tantalising but torturous all the while. From the Cthulu worship of ‘Carving In The Door’ and the love
wrenched angst and fear of the title track, which captures the essence of Edgar
Allen Poe exquisitely, I’ve never experienced an album like this before. You
don’t listen to the songs, you read them. They don’t remind you of other bands
– ‘Descending Into The Labyrinth’ aside,
which is unmistakably Opeth, and in a good
way – they remind you of authors, their stories and those chilling emotions you
felt while reading them.
Though there are few hooks or ‘choruses’ per se,
every single riff is intricately detailed and venomously, mercilessly executed.
It’s almost, in some strange way, a shame that there are so many killer riffs
lined up like convicts on Death Row in each and every song. Take just one of
those riffs, write an entire song around it, crown it with an anthemic chorus
and you feel they could be enormous. But that would be betraying what the very
foundation of what this band is, and so here we have sprawling and deft
compositions that gravitate within their own compelling universe. They throw
riffs and dextrous passages at you with abandon, each one succeeded by another
of the same, sterling quality.
When the moment strikes, preferably under a
funeral moon with rain rattling the window panes, simply pick one of these
songs and lose yourself.
“The
Moon Lit Out Path” is available here
FFO: Opeth, Cult of Luna, Callisto,
Omega Massif
