Moonspell is one of the leading extreme gothic metal bands who are currently active and ongoing. They started playing in 1992 and they’ve been on some major tours and they headlined some great festivals. So yeah, I was pretty excited to give this album a listen because ever since it was released, there has been a lot of fuss regarding it.
The lyrical concept of some tracks in the album, Extinct were beyond magnificent. ‘Breathe’ for example, the concept revolves around how we’ve lost connection with our humanity and what makes us who we are, in our quest to be ourselves and find out more about us. The album in general had some great tunes, the calm clean male gothic vocals and the guitar melodies packed with the tight progressive drum lines gave a really unique sound that you can’t get from anyone else. The good thing is that after all these years, the band is still in quite the shape and they have maintained their same style from past albums.
The strings part in ‘Breathe’ was highly influenced by oriental music, you can’t help but notice it. This made the track a favorite of mine because it stood out from the rest. The guitar melody of ‘Domina’ was so haunting you can hear it in your mind long after the track is ends. The solo is quite marvelous too, definitely one of my favorites and I implore the band to write more tracks like this one. The catchy intro and chorus riff of ‘The Last of Us’ is to be highlighted too, the use of the “delay” in the clean guitar in that one was splendid as well. Definitely one of the best moments of this album. ‘Malignia’ had some strings in it too but they were not oriental, more like complimentary line to the strong pounding guitar riffs combined with the bass and drums. All in all, the orchestrations of the album were simple yet strong.
‘A Dying Breed’ had quite the strange intro, the time in which the orchestrations start playing is really weird and you feel like it’s not in sync with the track. But once the track actually starts, it is an epic magnificent piece of music. Much like a fairytale theme. The clean chorus of ‘The Future Is Dark’ was so beautiful. The atmospheric solo of the track was just as beautiful you can’t miss it. The outro track of the album was the weirdest track of them all. It was all in French, that’s just for starters. The atmosphere of the track was much like a tango piece. Filled with orchestrations, choirs and piano notes mostly. And the vocals are a lot like whispers. The weirdest outro I’ve heard so far to be fair.
The artwork of the album is grotesquely beautiful, it is definitely to be highlighted too.
Once the album ended, I immediately replayed it. It is definitely one of the band’s best albums so far and I’ve quite enjoyed my time listening to it. So if you’re a hardcore fan of Moonspell and extreme gothic metal in general, you need to listen to this album.
Edited by: Ahmed S. Khalil
