Review Summary: Moonspell return to their roots of Wolfheart and Irreligious, delivering a great and crushingly heavy album that has some small shortcomings but is overall a memorable gothic/death metal album.
Memorial is a special album for Moonspell. This album – released in the spring of 2006 – marks the first time Moonspell focused more on looking back than innovating; perhaps one of the reasons for Moonspell to name this album ‘Memorial’. Thus far every Moonspell album brought something new to the table, for example venturing into industrial territories with 1999’s The Butterfly Effect or the inclusion of death metal influences on 2003’s The Antidote. Even though Memorial is quite a bit heavier than its predecessor The Antidote, it builds on roughly the same foundation that is a combination between gothic rock and (melodic) death metal with a profound Portuguese folk touch. However, now that Moonspell finally seem to be ‘playing it safe’, was Memorial a memorable release or is it best forgotten?
As its title suggest, Memorial thematically concerns itself about death, memories, tragedies in the past, old hatred and love but seems to lack an overarching theme such as The Antidote had. Lyrically therefore Memorial does not reach the same heights as its predecessor did, but overall it is obvious that Fernando Ribeiro’s writing has improved greatly over the years – especially since this time around he didn’t have the help of a novelist, which was the case on The Antidote.
It is the music itself that really counts, though. In that sense, Moonspell fans of old must have rejoiced hearing the old-school direction Moonspell have taken on this release. The Antidote already had this Portuguese band honoring their roots and returning with a heavier sound than on the albums before, but Memorial takes this a few steps further: much (though not all) of the gothic rock and fragile atmospheres that were created have been exchanged for a much more direct and minimalistic heavy metal approach. As a product of this every song has Fernando Ribeiro using his growled harsh vocals alongside his excellent clean singing voice. Hereby Memorial reminds us much more of their first two releases Wolfheart and Irreligious than any other album they’ve released in the meantime. The atmospheric side of Moonspell has not been completely forgotten though; they rather return in the form of instrumental tracks (“In Memoriam”, “Sons of Earth”, “Proliferation” and “Mare Nostrum”) and one moody song that includes female vocals – from none other than The Gathering’s Anneke van Giersbergen – for the first time since Irreligious.
Moonspell’s returning to their roots payed off well for them, since this album was excellently received at its release in 2006. Memorial entered the Portuguese charts at number 1 on the first week of its release and managed to break into the German album charts at number 68. Furthermore, Memorial went gold in Portugal – making Moonspell the first Portuguese heavy metal group to receive the award for selling more than 10,000 copies of one album. Also, Memorial produced two lead singles – “Finisterra” and “Luna” – that both had decent showtime on international music television, back in the day channels such as MTV2 still broadcasted music videos rather than reality TV. Not unimportantly, Memorial was also initially received very well by the international press, getting a 6/7 and ‘album of the month’ from Metal Hammer and a 9/10 from both Rock Hard and Metal Heart.
International critics and album sales statistics do not lie this time around, since Memorial indeed is a great album. Memorial opens strongly with “Finisterra” after the instrumental opener “In Memoriam”, with an amazingly haunting lead riff, crushing double bass drums and Fernando Ribeiro screaming frantically about “a light (or rather a lie) at the end of the Earth”. Memorial continues fiercely with the headbanging anthems “Memento Mori” and “Blood Tells” that effortlessly combine a haunting atmosphere with both catchiness and heaviness. Moonspell hold nothing back on the next few tracks “Upon the Blood of Men”, “At the Image of Pain”, “Sanguine” and “Once it was Ours!” in terms of a continuous high tempo, harsh riffs, double bass drumming and Ribeiro grunting insanely. However, more diversity and holding back a little here would have given the album some space to breathe and allow for the atmosphere to entice the listener more effectively, since unfortunately in this middle section of Memorial the individual songs are too much alike and end up – even though they’re all more than decent in a vacuum – being somewhat forgettable. After one more of somewhat too plentiful instrumental breaks on Memorial “Luna” finally adds the much-wanted diversity the album desperately needed at this point. “Luna” has Fernando Ribeiro singing an excellent duet with Anneke van Giersbergen that is supported by one of the most hauntingly beautiful guitar melodies Ricardo Amorim has ever crafted and is altogether one of the highlights of this album. Memorial closes as well as it started with “Best Forgotten” that is a tragic, low-tempo and incredibly heavy song that is – contrary to its own title – one of the most memorable moments on this release.
In the end Memorial is indeed quite memorable and altogether a great release that is at its best during “Finisterra”, “Memento Mori”, “Luna” and “Best Forgotten”. This release could have been optimized though if Moonspell would have diversified their sound a bit more in terms of heaviness and tempo, such as they did on The Antidote. Furthermore, the instrumental tracks are a tad too common and break up the flow of the album at times. Moonspell might have been better off including only the few most memorable ones and leaving out two or three of them in the process. In the future, Moonspell would continue to honor their roots such as they do here on Memorial and further perfect the heavier take on their trademark sound, but we will get back to that on the review of Night Eternal.
