Moonspell — Darkness And Hope

Often, when you get familiar with an album, there is a single word that pretty much sums up this particular experience. 'Intriguing', 'overwhelming', 'satiating, 'irrelevant' or plain 'awful', for example. If you are one of those people who skip to the kudos immediately to release the tension and then read the reasoning behind it later (as in "now"), you may believe I would use one of the following words to describe "Darkness And Hope": 'Pitiful', 'mediocre', 'unjustifiable', 'worthless' or even 'bloody f**king terrible'. That is in no way the case here. Come on, this is Moonspell! I love this band and I doubt that I would ever use any of those words about one of their releases. No, the word that comes to mind is... 'disappointing'.

To understand my motives behind this conclusion, a brief examination of Moonspell's discography is in order (I will only bother with the main releases). In 1994, the EP "Under The Moonspell" is released, featuring a never-before heard mixture of doom metal, ethnic arabic music and hints of black metal. The year after, "Wolfheart" is released, and I won't even begin to rephrase how much praise this album has gotten throughout later metal history. One year later, 1996, and "Irreligious" - my favourite Moonspell album - is released. This CD is more streamlined, but more than compensates for that by having a nerve and passion pretty much unrivaled at that point in time.

In 1998 "Sin/Pecado" is sent out. Although disappointing upon first contact, this album's mission was to open doors to worlds darker and more personal than before. The songs had more identity, and gone were even the slightest references to the hackneyed extreme metal ideologies. "The Butterfly Effect" was then released, an album which again seemed boring at first, but has grown to be my favourite after "Irreligious". While the first half of the album was a bit trite, the second half is some of the most beautiful dark art put out lately.

OK, after this lengthy introduction, which leaves you left with the impression that I have now reviewed every Moonspell album but the actual one, let's take a look at "Darkness And Hope". Oh that title is nice, I like darkness and I like hope. And as you might have noticed from my above rantings, the key point in Moonspell's music is ORIGINALITY. CREATIVITY. INNOVATION. Each and every one of those albums have had something new to offer. So naturally my expectations for this release are way up high. And, well, "Darkness And Hope"... hasn't got it.

Every song on this CD sounds like something they've done before. "Oh but they have that really cool song "Firewalking", it packs a punch!" Yeah, but it's a rehash of "Opium" meets "Ruins And Misery". "Well, how about "Ghostsong", then?" I'll take "Adaptables" or "Vulture Culture" over this version any day, thank you. In almost every song I can find a blatant recycling of old material. And in those I can't, well, they're just too boring to even have an identity. There are highlights, though, represented by "Rapaces" and "Than The Serpents In My Hands" (you will also note that the titles and lyrics are on a level generally lower than what is expected from this band), but these are nowhere near the atmosphere and intensity of many a former Moonspell song. I've listened to this album countless times, hoping that the inner magic would find me as it has done with the other albums, but it's just laughing in my face. It's not working.

Am I having too high expectations? Probably. But since a review is supposed to be subjective, well, here you have my subjective opinion. I don't care what Mikhail Capone says. I don't care what John Chedsey says. I don't care what Chris Dick says. Not in this context. I don't even care what Fernando Ribeiro says, unless it's something in the vein of "Well, yeah, guess we did a bit of a left hand release there, don't worry, it won't happen again". This album is maybe this year's biggest musical disappointment to me.

No, it isn't a bad album. It's a nice album in itself. The songs aren't badly written or anything. But they are just too damn low compared to what this album could have been. And the final score has been measured according to that.