Privilegium

This album is too long — 74 minutes of blackened death metal is just too much, no matter how epic and innovative it is. That being said, Secrets of the Moon do really bring something to the table — this is a very heavy record with a lot to appreciate. The guitar riffs owe a little bit to recent Satyricon, while the compositions as a whole are complex and aggressive. Sampled crowds shout their approval at certain moments on songs like "I Maldoror," as if they're watching gladiators murder each other in the Roman Coliseum, while liturgical chants open the album. The 13-minute "Harvest" suite adds tribal drumming and almost post-metal guitar work to the mix, but the headbanging fury at the core of their sound remains intact. Occasionally they dip into doom, and the vocals sometimes have an almost gothic creepiness mixed with the traditional metal guttural-ness, but over the long haul this album just becomes too much. Aside from the 13-minute suite and two just-under-two-minute intro/interstitial pieces, every track is between seven and nine minutes long, and as they pile up one upon another, they become indistinguishable. Five or six of these songs, adding up to a 40-minute album, would have made a better, more concise artistic statement. Secrets of the Moon are very good at what they do, but they need to give the listener a smaller dose next time.