I'd never heard any Moonspell until I got this album, nor did I hear any of their work under their previous name. Taking a black metal approach to album structure they begin "Irreligious" with a simple, short, instrumental "Perverse... Almost Religious". This goes right into "Opium", an upbeat death metal song with deep clean vocals, not without the occassional growl. Moonspell have captured atmosphere in their songs without losing any of the intensity you'd expect from death metal. It's tough to call this death metal though, more of an experimental death metal. Playing with a synth in "Awake" they've created a somewhat broken song structure that combines excellently with the more traditional elements you'd expect to find. They are also of the few who have managed to achieve the use of clean vocals alongside with the growling. We should not forget about the excellent music though. The speed goes from a slow, atmosphere setting tempo, to a fast intensity inspiring beat. Accompanying this always is the guitar, not always really much of a lead though. This is somewhat intriguing, segments of certain songs have absolutely no predominant instrument, they are just all sort of there. Don't worry though, if you want the powerful guitar riffing, you'll get enough of it, but only when required by the music. That comment should be finished, saying required by the music, Moonspell seems to have focused their energy in arranging the elements of the song, rather than letting any individual element dominate or guide the song. And as you can probably guess, no such intracately arranged music, achieving such a full sound, goes without the synth. The use of the synth both as a support and lead produces some very intresting music throughout the album, and manages to create a very dark, gothic mood. But, just when everything is going fine they throw in some female vocals in "Raven Claws", that just sound out of place. In the song they sound fine, they are produced fine, but there's just something wrong about them, you'd have to hear them to understand. That does not however detract from this great album.
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