Enter the Moonlight Gate

Lord Belial is a group that was never able to reach a top position in my private band ranking. Strong moments and songs alternated with too many pretty faceless work results. As far as I can see, "Enter the Moonlight Gate" is one of their best outputs. Nevertheless, it demonstrates the dilemma of the band's career as well. It is ornamented with a great, gloomy artwork and the opener, simultaneously the title track, creates a hellish atmosphere that pulverizes any enemy in a matter of minutes. But what about the remaining playtime? Well, let's go into details.

One thing is for sure, "Enter the Moonlight Gate" is not a bad album. Lord Belial have the compositional and technical skills to pen a comparatively opulent full-length. Yet it would have been helpful to keep an eye on the compactness of the tracks. Some of them are slightly too long and lack a little bit of coherence. "Unholy Spell of Lilith" - and I could mention many other songs at this point - is a good number, neither lacklustre nor lukewarm. It is based on powerful guitars and does not lack vehemence. But what remains after its last tones have faded? Nothing, maybe with the exception of the sinister "Shem Ham Forash" conjurations. I miss a memorable riff, a great theme or a chorus which can be easily internalized. After all, the track does not suffer from fragile female vocals. They show up in "Path with Endless Horizons" and ruin the song as good as possible. Yet they are not the main problem of the album.

While the comparatively brutal opener leaves a trail of devastation, many of the further tracks deliver pretty melodic parts that do not do any harm. "Lamia" with its infinite and powerless mid-tempo parts is just, well, lame. I readily admit that the band is definitely able to set its inner demons free. The most vigorous parts and the demonic aura of the lead vocals leave no doubt about it. Yet their effect falls flat as soon as lengthy parts give room for overly harmonic tone sequences. Even a shitty flute shows up from time to time and I hate it, not only because I had to learn to play this instrument when I was a child. Traumatic experience! However, the band cannot completely fulfil its self-defined, high expectations. The magnum opus of the album, the excessive closer with a playtime of roughly twelve minutes, constitutes the prime example in this context. Many good parts shape an actually strong number, but a few rather useless intermezzos bring down the over-ambitious tune in view of their soft, gothic tendencies. Not to mention the female whining at the end of the number. In short, it is a decent track, but not the outstanding monument that it wants to be.

"Black Winter Blood-Bath" (what an overly generic title) follows the same path that the opener has taken. It cannot achieve its glorious amount of power and strength, yet it is significantly harsher - and better - than the majority of the other tracks. The tracks illustrates how the band sounds with the appropriate degree of fierce determination. Too bad that the definitely talented musicians have missed the opportunity to ennoble this well produced album with more compelling compositions. And it is therefore almost only logical that the "hidden" track at the end of the album, a rhythmic orgy without any sense, also fails to save the situation.