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REVIEW: Moonloop - True Nature Revealed
Self-financed, 2007
Spain is a tough place to play metal, to make it short. The scene is limited, bands are often immature and lack originality; gigs are scarce. In addition, there are other things, common to the metal world in general, but let´s drop them. In the middle of this swamp some bands appear from time to time, bringing a gust of fresh air into the monotony of goth wimps, cheap black metallers and tawdry power metal hanging around this land. Moonloop had the salmon philosophy and against all odds they started their musical journey performing progressive death metal, a minor style in the metal scene and a rarity in Spain. Introducing a new band to the people, especially talking about prog, is a bit hard if you don´t mention influences, and the most prominent ones I reckon when hearing Moonloop are Edge Of Sanity, Opeth, Cynic, Porcupine Tree and even some guitar heros like Steve Vai. A rich cauldron, really! The most outstanding trait of Moonloop is their ability to write advanced sonic amalgams not based on 70´s bands; that allows them to not anchor in old structures and the result is fresh aggressive metal music incorporating nuances from modern progressive music without losing the metal essence nor the dark, violent side of our beloved music. “True Nature Revealed” is the latest demo of this band and it portrays their most complex stuff to date. It starts with a short intro, and here I find one down of this release, these guys are creative enough to use other artists samples as they do with this prelude... The course of the album is spiced with emotional solos, delicate background keys, plenty of tempo changes and a deep and charming guitar work; things by themselves worthy, but not enough: the band show a consistent feeling and essence throughout the recording which many bands fail to achieve. It´s not the “let´s copy-paste some riffs we´ve collected through the last two months” progressive band; the movements and changes are rather correct, and the dynamics are solved pretty well albeit the songs flow sometimes sparse because of the too twisted stuff. Variation is managed in a bit unbalanced way, so some riffs and passages are not relevant or don´t work properly in my opinion. That goes e.g. for clean voices, that sometimes lack consistence (“Emptiness”). Growls are better managed that clean vocal parts, but the band has improved mellow lines a lot since their early recordings. Moonloop are in constant evolution and “True Nature Revealed” is another token of their great potential. Crushing emotional modern metal tunes as “Strombus” and “Landscape” speak by themselves in a quite explanatory way. Don´t lose their track...
| Tracklist |
| 1. New Dawn |
| 2. Strombus |
| 3. A Life Divided |
| 4. Emptiness |
| 5. Landscape |
| 6. True Nature Revealed |
: 24.59
| Buy other Moonloop albums |
