One of the most difficult blends that took time to be done was Black/Doom Metal, until the day TRISTITIA unleashed “One with Darkness” (1995) and “Crucidiction” (1996), thus paving the way for generations to come to expand limits. To make Black/Doom Metal is far from playing slow and use satanic themes on the lyrics, and it matters a lot of what the musicians’ creativity. And besides “Odes to the Ritual Hills” depicts a lot of flaws, MOONFALL has potential.

The band fuses elements of both genres with an Old School insight, or in other ways, choose to have a putrid and raw outfit for their music, as one could mix old expressions used by MAYHEM, BATHORY, PENTAGRAM and BLACK SABBATH in their musical works. It shows a good insight, but that demands a bit more of sharpening on it. It’s not bad, but they could be better. The main problem of “Odes to the Ritual Hills” resides on the sonority. The band has a vision to make things as putrid and lo-fi as Black Metal and Doom Metal were on its prime, but no one seems to advise them that a raw insight would damage their musical ideas, because it sounds like having BLASPHEMY playing Doom Death Metal and using keyboards.

On the songs: beside such problems, after the intro “1560”, there are many very good ideas used on “Countess Carody” (as the contrasts between guitars and keyboards), “Ode to the Ritual Hills” (the snarls and growls sounds good). “Thus Spoke Satanael” is just an outro made of keyboards. The best to do: to focus on these good ideas and sharp their efforts a bit more (one tip: uses songs with shorter times on the next release, and evade long intros and outros as well). Fans of Old School Black Metal will surely be able to deal with “Odes to the Ritual Hill” better than other fans. But MOONFALL is welcome to the Metal scene.