Post by Deleted on Mar 30, 2016 12:32:50 GMT -6
Crimson Moonlight - Songs from the Archives
Year: 2003
Genre: Symphonic Black Metal
Crimson Moonlight, having been around since 1997, is a band with an extensive history that features many lineup changes. A total of seventeen people have been or are in the band - that's quite a lot. Pilgrim and Gurra (the vocalist and the drummer) have stuck around since the beginning. Other people have come and gone, and in the case of Jonathan Jansson, come back. Songs from the Archives is a compilation of some of the rarer CM material - Eternal Emperor, The Glorification of the Master of Light ~Live~, and the fabled Heralding the Dawn demo, which I'm not even sure was ever released. The album insert, though simple, provides a lot of insight into what was going on in the band by providing a lineup for each section of the compilation and information about which members were involved in songwriting. What I dub the "symphonic phase" of CM (1997-2002) featured a few key songwriters who left before the production of The Covenant Progress, and that probably explains the major sound change from Heralding the Dawn. Alexander Orest, the keyboard player for Glorification, Emperor, and Heralding, was a major songwriter for Emperor and Heralding and was also involved in the songwriting for Glorification to a certain extent, and he left the band just before Covenant. David Seiving, the bassist and clean vocalist for Heralding and also a major songwriter for that release, left the band just before Covenant as well. Samuel Lundström, a Heralding guitarist, also left the band prior to Covenant. Heralding the Dawn saw the band in its most symphonic state (even more so than Eternal Emperor), featuring lots of synthwork, clean vocals, and some acoustic guitars. My guess is that Orest and Seiving were the driving forces behind that symphonic sound, so when they left and the band as a whole began writing songs together, the interest in symphonic black metal waned, and thus the band began to move away from their old sound and more towards what eventually became Veil of Remembrance, with The Covenant Progress being the transition period between the two. This could never be confirmed without conducting interviews with the band members, but it is an interesting hypothesis nonetheless.
Now that you're done reading the research section of this review, let's dig into the actual music. Eternal Emperor is a fairly well-known EP and somewhat of a classic in the CBM scene. It's a relatively primitive and low-production release, which I like, though it isn't mixed very well. The guitars are a little too quiet and the keyboards are a little too loud. The drums are mixed in well though, and they're nice and loud, which fits this style well. The songwriting for this EP is very well done, featuring some quite catchy and memorable riffs as well as some awesome symphonic interludes. Orest's performances on "Preludium" and "Symphony of Light" are noteworthy and make the EP feel whole and complete. It wouldn't feel the same without those interludes. The symphonic intros to "Eternal Emperor" and "The Final Battle" are equally superb. Eternal Emperor is overall a very good piece of somewhat lighthearted symphonic black metal, and it was no doubt an influence on a lot of bands in the scene.
The Glorification of the Master of Light ~Live~ is interesting to me because we're presented with a song ("Skymningsljus") that was absent from the original Glorification demo and was never seen outside of this live EP. Additionally, "Eternal Emperor" was included, despite not being a part of the original demo. By the standards of live black metal, the recording is very good, not just with regards to the band's performance, but also with regards to sound quality and the audibility of all of the instruments. The guitars are pretty quiet and the drums are quite loud, but that's fine and it's to be expected. The guitars shine through enough (and I know some of the songs well enough) that I can usually tell what's going on. The atmosphere created by this music is really great and that's mostly thanks to not only the keyboards but also the sounds of crowd members talking amongst themselves. You can particularly hear this during "Skymningsljus", the catchy acoustic interlude. There's even some talking by one of the band members at the end of it, and I can only assume that it's a prayer. It's in another language (which I'm 99% sure is Swedish) so I have no idea what he's saying. If you manage to zone into the music enough and tune out the world around you, it doesn't become too difficult to trick yourself into thinking that you're actually watching the band perform. I really enjoy these live tracks.
"Blood Covered My Needs", a track that originally appeared on Endtime Productions' In the Shadow of Death compilation, makes an appearance here. It sounds very similar to the Heralding the Dawn material, which makes sense considering that it was recorded only one year earlier and features a near-identical lineup. It is without a doubt one of my favorite CM songs of all time. It is expertly crafted, with some complicated but memorable riffs and lots of keyboards. There's a part in the middle of the song where the drums drop out for a short but dramatic spoken vocal section, followed by one of the most powerful parts of any black metal song I've ever heard. The entire band seemed to be at the top of their game with this song, and it mostly carried over into Heralding the Dawn.
Analyzing Heralding the Dawn is made difficult by the fact that the songs were put on the CD in the wrong order. I've come to this conclusion through a little bit of research. The album booklet for Songs from the Archives cites the track order as "Your Face", "Touch of Emptiness", "...And Thus Rejoice", and "A Thorn in My Heart". This is the same order that they are on the CD and on the MP3 download versions. On the CD/download, the track labeled "Touch of Emptiness" is is a minute-and-a-half-long piano interlude with half-whispered, half-spoken vocals over it. Looking at the booklet, five people are credited with the writing for it: David Seiving, Petter Stenmarker (a guitarist and vocalist), Alexander Orest, Gustav Elowsson (Gurra, the drummer), and Samuel Lundström. Why would five people, including the drummer, be involved in the creation of a piano-based interlude? A Crimson Moonlight song known as "Touch of Emptiness" was featured on the Power from the Sky - A New Wave of Swedish Metal compilation released by Rivel Records. The song featured on that compilation is the song known as "Your Face" on Songs from the Archives. Additionally, listening closely, the first two words whispered in the interlude sound like "your face". This leads me to believe that the songs "Your Face" and "Touch of Emptiness" were swapped. "Your Face" was meant to be the title of the interlude and the intro to Heralding the Dawn. "Touch of Emptiness" was supposed to be the full song that comes after it. The places and names of those two tracks are swapped on Songs from the Archives, causing the full song to be placed in front of the interlude, but with the titles positioned incorrectly to make the order appear correct. Just for clarity once again, "Your Face" is the correct title for the interlude, and "Touch of Emptiness" is the correct title for the full song, and the correct track order places the interlude in front of the full song. Confused? I can't blame you if you are. I'll continue my analysis of Heralding the Dawn using the correct song names and order, not the false ones provided by the CD/download.
The four tracks that comprise Heralding the Dawn see Crimson Moonlight at their most symphonically complex state. This demo contains keyboards galore, and I love it. It creates a very bright but sometimes mysterious atmosphere. "Your Face" (once again, the minute-and-a-half-long piano interlude at the beginning) provides a nice opening to the demo and sets the mood perfectly. The other three songs are actually drawn out and feature a lot of variety, including several acoustic sections, some very nice clean vocals here and there, and some piano melodies. The songs have a very majestic feeling to them. A version of "A Thorn in My Heart", which later appeared on The Covenant Progress is included here, and it's really neat. The style is very different from the Covenant version of it. The riffs are mostly the same, but there are a lot more keyboards and more varied vocals, and the song as a whole feels a lot less aggressive than the Covenant version. It also doesn't slow down at the end. I like these Heralding the Dawn tracks a lot and they leave me wanting more, but I'm still happy that CM took the direction they did when writing The Covenant Progress, considering that it's my favorite metal album of all time.
The last two tracks on Songs from the Archives are taken from The Covenant Progress, and my assumption is that they were thrown in there as a sort of promotion for said album. "A Painting in Dark", my second favorite song from Covenant (only beaten by "Eyes of Beauty") acts as a nice closer for the compilation. Before it, however, is a track labeled "The Pilgrimage". Anyone familiar with The Covenant Progress will immediately recognize that this track is in fact "Mist of the Spiritual Dimension", not "The Pilgrimage". "Mist of the Spiritual Dimension" was a good track and a nice, aggressive opener, so it's cool that they've included it here. I just wish that they wouldn't have messed up its name. This only further proves my previously discussed theories regarding the names of the songs of Heralding the Dawn. Anyway, I love The Covenant Progress, and these are two great songs from it that acted as a good promo for the album back in 2003.
Congratulations, you've made it to the end of this monstrosity of a review. If you're a fan of Crimson Moonlight or if you're just looking for some good symphonic black metal, you need to buy this compilation. It's sadly become somewhat rare, but you should be able to find a copy. They are typically pretty expensive though.
97/100
-CrimsonWarrior
Buy it from Doolittle Store:
doolittle.bigcartel.com/product/crimson-moonlight-songs-from-the-archives
Also check eBay and Amazon. I got mine from the latter.
Year: 2003
Genre: Symphonic Black Metal
Crimson Moonlight, having been around since 1997, is a band with an extensive history that features many lineup changes. A total of seventeen people have been or are in the band - that's quite a lot. Pilgrim and Gurra (the vocalist and the drummer) have stuck around since the beginning. Other people have come and gone, and in the case of Jonathan Jansson, come back. Songs from the Archives is a compilation of some of the rarer CM material - Eternal Emperor, The Glorification of the Master of Light ~Live~, and the fabled Heralding the Dawn demo, which I'm not even sure was ever released. The album insert, though simple, provides a lot of insight into what was going on in the band by providing a lineup for each section of the compilation and information about which members were involved in songwriting. What I dub the "symphonic phase" of CM (1997-2002) featured a few key songwriters who left before the production of The Covenant Progress, and that probably explains the major sound change from Heralding the Dawn. Alexander Orest, the keyboard player for Glorification, Emperor, and Heralding, was a major songwriter for Emperor and Heralding and was also involved in the songwriting for Glorification to a certain extent, and he left the band just before Covenant. David Seiving, the bassist and clean vocalist for Heralding and also a major songwriter for that release, left the band just before Covenant as well. Samuel Lundström, a Heralding guitarist, also left the band prior to Covenant. Heralding the Dawn saw the band in its most symphonic state (even more so than Eternal Emperor), featuring lots of synthwork, clean vocals, and some acoustic guitars. My guess is that Orest and Seiving were the driving forces behind that symphonic sound, so when they left and the band as a whole began writing songs together, the interest in symphonic black metal waned, and thus the band began to move away from their old sound and more towards what eventually became Veil of Remembrance, with The Covenant Progress being the transition period between the two. This could never be confirmed without conducting interviews with the band members, but it is an interesting hypothesis nonetheless.
Now that you're done reading the research section of this review, let's dig into the actual music. Eternal Emperor is a fairly well-known EP and somewhat of a classic in the CBM scene. It's a relatively primitive and low-production release, which I like, though it isn't mixed very well. The guitars are a little too quiet and the keyboards are a little too loud. The drums are mixed in well though, and they're nice and loud, which fits this style well. The songwriting for this EP is very well done, featuring some quite catchy and memorable riffs as well as some awesome symphonic interludes. Orest's performances on "Preludium" and "Symphony of Light" are noteworthy and make the EP feel whole and complete. It wouldn't feel the same without those interludes. The symphonic intros to "Eternal Emperor" and "The Final Battle" are equally superb. Eternal Emperor is overall a very good piece of somewhat lighthearted symphonic black metal, and it was no doubt an influence on a lot of bands in the scene.
The Glorification of the Master of Light ~Live~ is interesting to me because we're presented with a song ("Skymningsljus") that was absent from the original Glorification demo and was never seen outside of this live EP. Additionally, "Eternal Emperor" was included, despite not being a part of the original demo. By the standards of live black metal, the recording is very good, not just with regards to the band's performance, but also with regards to sound quality and the audibility of all of the instruments. The guitars are pretty quiet and the drums are quite loud, but that's fine and it's to be expected. The guitars shine through enough (and I know some of the songs well enough) that I can usually tell what's going on. The atmosphere created by this music is really great and that's mostly thanks to not only the keyboards but also the sounds of crowd members talking amongst themselves. You can particularly hear this during "Skymningsljus", the catchy acoustic interlude. There's even some talking by one of the band members at the end of it, and I can only assume that it's a prayer. It's in another language (which I'm 99% sure is Swedish) so I have no idea what he's saying. If you manage to zone into the music enough and tune out the world around you, it doesn't become too difficult to trick yourself into thinking that you're actually watching the band perform. I really enjoy these live tracks.
"Blood Covered My Needs", a track that originally appeared on Endtime Productions' In the Shadow of Death compilation, makes an appearance here. It sounds very similar to the Heralding the Dawn material, which makes sense considering that it was recorded only one year earlier and features a near-identical lineup. It is without a doubt one of my favorite CM songs of all time. It is expertly crafted, with some complicated but memorable riffs and lots of keyboards. There's a part in the middle of the song where the drums drop out for a short but dramatic spoken vocal section, followed by one of the most powerful parts of any black metal song I've ever heard. The entire band seemed to be at the top of their game with this song, and it mostly carried over into Heralding the Dawn.
Analyzing Heralding the Dawn is made difficult by the fact that the songs were put on the CD in the wrong order. I've come to this conclusion through a little bit of research. The album booklet for Songs from the Archives cites the track order as "Your Face", "Touch of Emptiness", "...And Thus Rejoice", and "A Thorn in My Heart". This is the same order that they are on the CD and on the MP3 download versions. On the CD/download, the track labeled "Touch of Emptiness" is is a minute-and-a-half-long piano interlude with half-whispered, half-spoken vocals over it. Looking at the booklet, five people are credited with the writing for it: David Seiving, Petter Stenmarker (a guitarist and vocalist), Alexander Orest, Gustav Elowsson (Gurra, the drummer), and Samuel Lundström. Why would five people, including the drummer, be involved in the creation of a piano-based interlude? A Crimson Moonlight song known as "Touch of Emptiness" was featured on the Power from the Sky - A New Wave of Swedish Metal compilation released by Rivel Records. The song featured on that compilation is the song known as "Your Face" on Songs from the Archives. Additionally, listening closely, the first two words whispered in the interlude sound like "your face". This leads me to believe that the songs "Your Face" and "Touch of Emptiness" were swapped. "Your Face" was meant to be the title of the interlude and the intro to Heralding the Dawn. "Touch of Emptiness" was supposed to be the full song that comes after it. The places and names of those two tracks are swapped on Songs from the Archives, causing the full song to be placed in front of the interlude, but with the titles positioned incorrectly to make the order appear correct. Just for clarity once again, "Your Face" is the correct title for the interlude, and "Touch of Emptiness" is the correct title for the full song, and the correct track order places the interlude in front of the full song. Confused? I can't blame you if you are. I'll continue my analysis of Heralding the Dawn using the correct song names and order, not the false ones provided by the CD/download.
The four tracks that comprise Heralding the Dawn see Crimson Moonlight at their most symphonically complex state. This demo contains keyboards galore, and I love it. It creates a very bright but sometimes mysterious atmosphere. "Your Face" (once again, the minute-and-a-half-long piano interlude at the beginning) provides a nice opening to the demo and sets the mood perfectly. The other three songs are actually drawn out and feature a lot of variety, including several acoustic sections, some very nice clean vocals here and there, and some piano melodies. The songs have a very majestic feeling to them. A version of "A Thorn in My Heart", which later appeared on The Covenant Progress is included here, and it's really neat. The style is very different from the Covenant version of it. The riffs are mostly the same, but there are a lot more keyboards and more varied vocals, and the song as a whole feels a lot less aggressive than the Covenant version. It also doesn't slow down at the end. I like these Heralding the Dawn tracks a lot and they leave me wanting more, but I'm still happy that CM took the direction they did when writing The Covenant Progress, considering that it's my favorite metal album of all time.
The last two tracks on Songs from the Archives are taken from The Covenant Progress, and my assumption is that they were thrown in there as a sort of promotion for said album. "A Painting in Dark", my second favorite song from Covenant (only beaten by "Eyes of Beauty") acts as a nice closer for the compilation. Before it, however, is a track labeled "The Pilgrimage". Anyone familiar with The Covenant Progress will immediately recognize that this track is in fact "Mist of the Spiritual Dimension", not "The Pilgrimage". "Mist of the Spiritual Dimension" was a good track and a nice, aggressive opener, so it's cool that they've included it here. I just wish that they wouldn't have messed up its name. This only further proves my previously discussed theories regarding the names of the songs of Heralding the Dawn. Anyway, I love The Covenant Progress, and these are two great songs from it that acted as a good promo for the album back in 2003.
Congratulations, you've made it to the end of this monstrosity of a review. If you're a fan of Crimson Moonlight or if you're just looking for some good symphonic black metal, you need to buy this compilation. It's sadly become somewhat rare, but you should be able to find a copy. They are typically pretty expensive though.
97/100
-CrimsonWarrior
Buy it from Doolittle Store:
doolittle.bigcartel.com/product/crimson-moonlight-songs-from-the-archives
Also check eBay and Amazon. I got mine from the latter.