Artist: Black Fullmoon
Country: Puerto Rico
Label: Mamzer Records / Wolfkult Religion
Formats: Demo Tape
Year: 2025
Pure Les Légions Noires worship: the Puerto Rican Black Metal band Black Fullmoon clearly didn’t hide their intentions for their debut demo. And in a lot of ways, their Raw Black Metal basis approached that style of the unique collective of bands from France that shaped Black Metal in their own way in the mid to late 90’s. But the band had something more to offer, a sense of melody, melodiousness even. And that has come to full fruition on their second demo.
‘Antithesis of the Light’ builds on the formula of the first demo but is a considerable step forward in terms of songwriting. And much has to do with an increase in underlying Heavy Metal melodies. While that raw basis of the LLN sound is still very much there, the most obvious manifestion is the melodic leads that draw the music towards epic Heavy Metal at time. This is by far the most apparent in the instrumental opener ‘The Sacred Saber of Hugues de Payens’, a song laden with prominent melodious twin leads that are not unlike some epic Heavy/Doom Metal bands. In other words, extremely catchy.
At its most melodic, it’s mostly the rawer production that draws the music firmly into Black Metal territories, but a major part of the demo is fundamentally more rooted in French Black Metal. ‘Perishing Cries of the Templar’ is a more threatening song, with slight distortion on the vocals, and the melodies mostly subside in a deeper layer of the music, waiting to rear its head when the pace slows down. The music still retains an epic touch, not in the least because of the nicely rumbling bass. Likewise, ‘Thy Grandmaster’ is more of a pulsating Black Metal track that with more subdued melodic elements and has a slight unnerving twist to it. The worlds of melody and harshness combine in ‘To Whose Honor Fuels My Antithesis’, containing sharp riffs, background keyboards, growls and clear Heavy Metal melodies. Nothing is too overt, vocals are just part of the instrumentation, yet the song manages to flow organically. The demo ends with ‘To Whose Honor Fuels My Antithesis’, once again a clash or raw and epic Black Metal, with pulsating drums, twists and turns, a dose of melancholy and twin melodies that even draw it towards a band like Dissection.
So indeed, ‘Antithesis of the Light’ is a significant step forward. And it’s not just in that Black Fullmoon added more subdued and overt melodies. It’s in the way that they’ve integrated them into the existing LLN-inspired Black Metal framework. The music has equal parts rawness and epic sense of adventure, gnarly riffs and beautiful leads. An excellent development for the band, and certainly one of the best demos I’ve heard this year so far.
