In this household we rate Moonlight Sorcery. This household being that of the present writer. Last year I interviewed them for Metal Rules and one of my questions was about blue and purple album covers being guaranteed success in black metal, and symphonic black metal in particular. Well, dear reader, you would be [dis]pleased to notice their new offering, Horned Lord Of The Thorned Castle, diverges from this standard visually – but retains the high standard we’ve come to expect from their previous two releases musically.

Just as melodic and creative, Horned Lord nonetheless differs from Piercing Through the Frozen Eternity and Nightwind in one major way. The production is a lot cleaner – and this seems entirely deliberate. Now, I won’t go into polemics debating clean versus low production in black metal (even though I do have a preference), but while noisy and gritty production was perfect for the previous two releases, Horned Lord is a bit of a different beast. Rifftastic and synthlicious, it contains both new levels of speed and of symphonic elements for Moonlight Sorcery.

At nine tracks, one would expect Horned Lord to be an unending stretch of repetitiveness. However, it’s anything but – the total running time is just about 44 minutes, and it’s very much listenable in one go, again and again. I won’t lie, this is an album that requires multiple listens to fully appreciate. Not for a lack of catchiness, but because it’s just so damn dense. The band says that this could be a single 44 minute track album, and I completely agree. However, every single track is equally perfectly listenable on its own. Track number 6, The Moonlit Dance Of The Twisted Jester’s Blood-soaked Rituals is a particular highlight of the album. It encapsulates its entire raison d’être in a rifflicious decadence.

I admit, I still have a preference for the ice-cold sound of Piercing Through The Frozen Eternity, with its brutal yet calculated primitivity. But Horned Lord Of The Thorned Castle is pretty cool too.

(8.5/10 The Flâneur)

https://www.facebook.com/moonlight.sorcery

https://avantgardemusic.bandcamp.com/album/horned-lord-of-the-thorned-castle