Artist: Moonlight Sorcery
Country: Finland
Label: Avantgarde Music
Formats: 7″ EP
Year: 2023
Admittedly, I felt a little let down by Moonlight Sorcery’s second EP, ‘Nightwind: The Conqueror From The Stars’ from December 2022. Although having largely the same ingredients as their stunning debut EP from earlier 2022, that second EP suffered from a production that sounded a lot less overwhelming. Its slightly grittier sound made the overall experience just a matter of wonder, what made the band choose for this sort of direction and what would that mean for the already announced debut album?
Before we dive into that question, I have to get it off my chest that I was surprised that the band would come out with yet another EP. Last year the band debuted with the excellent ‘Piercing Through The Frozen Eternity’ 12” EP and already followed it up with the aforementioned 12” EP by the end of the same year. Releasing another EP doesn’t feel as the most logical next step, but that might also just typify the band’s vision of their own musical development and direction to take.
This, however, is the band’s first 7” EP and presents us two tracks of which the first one is the most interesting. ‘In Coldest Embrace’ is a song that should satisfy everyone who loved their previous work. And, most notably, it seems a return to a more fluent and clear production. Sound-wise it is much closer to ‘Piercing Through The Frozen Eternity’ than to ‘Nightwind: The Conqueror From The Stars’, yet on a musical level it seems to combine both EP’s. The result is a song that has those rich symphonic elements as well as those impressive guitar solos, yet it has not the same grandiose power and overall epic beauty of the debut EP – instead it shares its focus on a bit more riff-directed drive. The second track is ‘Burn’, a cover-track from Deep Purple taken off their album with the same name from 1974. With such a synth-heavy and symphonic take on Black Metal it might be of very little surprise that these guys have had a weak spot for Jon Lord-ish key-wizardry. The cover is well done and although the band doesn’t drift too far off from its original composition, it gets a well-done Moonlight Sorcery treatment. Personally I am not too fond of this sort of covers, but it works well as a B-side of an album-appetizer like this.
Cutting a long story short, after their second EP that, in hindsight, may be just short of the level of expectations the band had raised with their debut EP, I think we can still confidently look forward to the band’s debut album. This latest track, ‘In Coldest Embrace’, provides more than enough reason to do so…
