Following a full decade of inaction, Poland’s Moon are back with a new lineup and a new musical direction, having moved away from the symphonic BM sound of previous album ‘Satan’s Wept’ and on into harsher black/death territory this time around with new album ‘Lucifer’s Horns’. The album cover is one of those thrown-together, professional-looking yet flat and generic photoshop affairs that seem to crop up everywhere nowadays (Dimmu Borgir, take a bow), featuring a grim-faced and demonic Christlike figure with a giant serpent nesting in his crown of horns, and it’s an image which, along with the spectacularly lazy album title, hints at po-faced cardboard Satanism, overly slick production and a complete lack of surprises to follow.
In spite of this the album starts off very promisingly however, gearing up with a suitably ominous intro full of martial drum-rolls that gives way to some gratifyingly dense and chaotic black-tinged riffing and clattering drums on the album’s title track. Said track gallops along urgently and single-mindedly in Belphegor’s wake with all the momentum of a heavily-armoured cavalry charge, regularly ploughing through rousing, God-Dethroned-style, chugging melodic grooves and accompanied by an onslaught of guttural shrieks of which the only words decipherable over the cacophonous beating of metaphorical hooves are summons to Lucifer and Satan. It’s a straightforward but wholly enjoyable track that makes up for its lack of invention by being seriously pummelling and laden with hooks, but as the album progresses it becomes increasingly apparent that there just aren’t enough ideas to go around.
“Torches Begin to Burn” throws together thundering build-ups, high-octane yet one-dimensional hammering and a gratifyingly chunky and clinical mid-paced bridge, adding the odd incongruous sprinkling of folksy Spanish guitar here and there for good measure, but the end result is no more than the sum of its parts. This is something that sums up the album as a whole, its’ musical arrangements feeling professional yet rarely more than perfunctory and with the interesting passages frequently swamped by entirely generic blasting that gratifies the reptilian brain but leaves higher order functions free to daydream about what to have for tea.
There are undoubtedly plenty of hugely enjoyable passages on ‘Lucifer’s Horns’, for example “The Book of Fire” opens with some tight and immensely heavy stop-start riffing before spilling over into some satisfyingly chaotic melodies nicely underpinned by demented clattering and simple-but-effective drum fills, whilst “Night of the Serpent” does a good job of capturing some of the heroic, face-in-a-jet-engine melody and battleground atmosphere of those purveyors of finest ‘Northern Hyperblast’, Kataklysm. “Semen of Ye Old One” meanwhile stands out for possessing actual feeling that is so lacking elsewhere, opening with passages of ominous rumblings that invoke imagery of some hideous beast tearing its way through the undergrowth before flourishing into the rousing call-and-answer of an exhilarating melodic riff and bombastic, underpinning tattoo that hurtles forward and stirs up the electrifying spectre of Arckanum for the briefest of moments. This is contrasted with an epic, mid-paced passage that rises above the battlefield before another satisfying plunge into the chaotic depths of melee carnage takes hold, and for once the blasting feels charged and meaningfully focussed, conjuring up a desperate scene of breathless slaughter that leaves the smell of blood lingering in the nostrils.
Much of the album is content to just plough its way down well worn paths of workmanlike tremolo riffing and juggernaut chugging however, throwing in a hint of Nile or a thrown-together, unrestrained solo here and there to break up the senseless bombardment, but much as I’d love to quip that it’s more a case of ‘Satan’s Arse’ than Lucifer’s Horns, it remains a professionally executed and frequently enjoyable listen all the same. Unfortunately however the songs slip into generic filler material too easily and blend into one another too frequently to make Lucifer’s Horns anything to get seriously excited about.
http://www.myspace.com/moonsatanic
