Mooncitadel (FIN) – Night’s Scarlet Symphonies LP

Black Metal

At long last, the full fathom of MOONCITADEL’s now-transcendent powers arrives with the band’s long-awaited debut album, Night’s Scarlet Symphonies. If past MOONCITADEL recordings bore titles evocative of their respective contents, then surely Night’s Scarlet Symphonies trumps them all: here is a bountiful feast of splendorous, widescreen black metal mysticism that’s reverent of the mid ’90s whilst channeling energies new and untold. Everything about MOONCITADEL’s debut album – spiraling melodicism, folkloric atmosphere, impassioned performance, engrossing totality – maximizes the duo’s previous works to their fullest potential, all threaded together by a never-too-raw soundfield that heightens these elements further. Which is to say nothing of its attendant song titles; over the course of its impossibly vast 47-minute runtime, some of Night’s Scarlet Symphonies include “Ablaze My Heart With Falling Stars,” “Nightwind was the Passage Between Worlds,” “Whispering Cry of Magick Undying,” and especially “Monumental Silver Thorns” all conveying this (monumental, silvery, magickal) headspace.