Enter the Moonlight Gate

Lord Belial's "Enter the Moonlight Gate" is a masterpiece of melodic black metal that expertly blends aggression with beauty. From the moment the album begins with the commanding opening line, "Enter the Moonlight Gate!", it becomes clear that the listener is in for an intense journey. The band's use of blistering power chords, ferocious blast beats, and harsh black metal shrieks create an audio onslaught that is not for the faint of heart.

However, beneath the surface of the brutality lies a constant underflow of melody that is apparent throughout the entire album. Lord Belial skillfully weaves together various musical elements, from eerie whispered vocals to grief-soaked violin lines, to create a diverse and epic listening experience. The album's standout tracks include the anthemic "Lamia", which features some of the catchiest melodic lines in metal history, and "Realm of a Thousand Burning Souls, Part I", a 20-minute epic that showcases the band's ability to seamlessly transition between different musical styles.

What makes "Enter the Moonlight Gate" so special is its impeccable song construction. Lord Belial demonstrates a mastery of dynamics, expertly building tension and releasing it in explosive bursts of sound. The album's softer moments, such as the purely acoustic "Forlorn in Silence", provide a welcome respite from the brutality while still maintaining an emotional intensity.

It's a shame that this album was overlooked upon its release, as it stands as a classic example of the melodic black metal genre. While Lord Belial would go on to explore different musical styles in their later albums, "Enter the Moonlight Gate" remains a high point in their discography. Fans of black metal, as well as anyone who appreciates expertly crafted music, should give this album a listen.

If there is a black metal band that deserves more attention than they deserve, it's Lord Belial. Based in Sweden, the band's debut album " Kiss the Goat" was praised for being a more darker interpretation of melodic black metal bands like Dissection, and having some killer riffs. However, while that album was great, it would be their 1997 second album "Enter the Moonlight Gate" where Lord Belial truly showed their full potential.

To see what I mean, let's look at the instrumentals. The opening track "Enter the Moonlight Gate" throws us straight into the chaos with some raw guitars playing some cold and dark riffs, along with a powerful drum leading the track with its blastbeats and even a good bass play that adds in a thick foundation to it all. While this may give it a darker raw edge on paper, it's the production that makes it all work. The production is noticeably cleaner than that of the previous album, and it does give it that Dissection feel while also being more darker and mysterious in nature. While the first half of the album has some fantastic instrumentals, especially on "Unholy Spell of Lilith" and "Lamia". it's the second half of the track that really makes it all stand out, with the two stand-alone tracks being "Forlorn in Silence" and "Realm of a Thousand Burning Souls (Part I)". Forlorn in Silence mainly consists of an acoustic guitar that plays a soft calming riff with reverb, making the atmosphere relaxing along with the chilling vocals. Realm of a Thousand Burning Souls on the other hand is a long epic with some stellar riffs and powerful drumming that eventually concludes the album with ritualistic drumming and dark ambience. When it comes to the instrumentals, this album is one of the rare moments where its second half is stronger than its first half.

But this isn't even including the vocals, which make the instruments even stronger. Thomas Backelin's vocals on Kiss the Goat were good, but here, they're even better. In the track "Unholy Spell of Lilith" for instance, Thomas reflects on the chaotic atmosphere with his high-pitched shrieks. This sounds like the typical black metal vocals, but Thomas's creepy personality does add in more characteristics in the vocal delivery, so its haunting tone does reflect well on the instruments. The female vocalist Marielle Andersson is also just as strong, as her melodic singing works as a great contrast to the abrasive shrieking. The vocal performances of Thomas and Marielle are both fantastic, and are able to enhance the dark brutality of the instruments.

Even the lyrics are great. The songwriting on Lord Belial albums are usually good, but they're especially well-written on this album. Take the track "Path with Endless Horizons" for example, where this verse quotes:

Towards the towers black, to reach my kingdom
towards the towers black, to reach the realms of eternity
I’ve walked a thousand years in an everlasting night
on the path with endless horizons and eternal time.
the path with endless horizons, and eternal time!

This verse is about reaching a kingdom with a black tower for a thousand years. The description is simple, but elegant enough to paint a good picture of it all, and the darker tone of the setting does add in an eerie vibe to the journey. Furthermore, these instrumentals and vocals reflect well with the lyrics, as the raw and melancholic riffs further enhance the tragedy of the journey, as well as Thomas's shrieks making it all sound even more intense. The songwriting on this album is beautiful, and really does enforce this dark and slightly gothic style of the album well.

I'll admit that it was kind of hard finding the exact words to describe the album for this review, because it really is one of those albums that you have to hear for yourself. Its instruments mix Dissection-worship and dark black metal well, the vocals mix the shrieks and singing well, and the songwriting includes some of the best in Lord Belial's discography. While most of their other albums are good, none of them would be able to top the greatness that is "Enter the Moonlight Gate".

Aside from the notorious Norwegian scene, the black metal scene in Sweden was arguably the second largest exporter of black metal music in the 90’s. On one hand this scene brought us the likes of Marduk and Dark Funeral, who carried the traditional black metal torch while placing their own spin on the genre, but on the other hand, bands such as Dissection and Dawn emerged from the scene, pioneering what is now known as Melodic Black Metal. Nestled in between these two different styles of music is Lord Belial, a band that has managed to gain a fairly large amount of attention from black metal fans over the years. While the band’s debut, Kiss the Goat, was certainly a good album, the albums follow up, Enter the Moonlight Gate, is generally considered by fans to be Lord Belial’s masterpiece.

One of the first things that the listener will notice listening to Enter the Moonlight Gate is the unique production that the album has. While the production has similarities to the likes of Sacramentum and Dissection, there is a much larger emphasis on a wall of sound. This is readily apparent in the opening track where the guitars emit a massive amount of reverb that envelops the rest of the music, giving the album a dreamlike atmosphere. After a barrage of tremolo picked guitar riffs and blast beats, the opening track flies into an extremely atmospheric guitar solo about a minute in that lets the listener know immediately that this is no run-of-the-mill black metal album. As the song continues on, female vocals enter, something that returns throughout the album, at several points, adding heavily to the dark and sorrowful atmosphere that the song has. Later on in the album, the listener will also notice that Lord Belial utilizes a lot of acoustic guitar, cello, and flute at various points in the album which can be heard on songs such as “Lamia” and the excellent instrumental, “Forlorn in Silence” which also give Enter the Moonlight Gate a unique sound that has allowed it to stand the test of time.

As one could guess based on this description, the performances on Enter the Moonlight Gate are excellent. The vocals on the album, handled by Thomas Backelin, are fantastic and sound absolutely throat-tearing. Due to their savage nature, the vocals contribute heavily to the dark atmosphere overall. Aside from the vocals, Backelin also handles the guitars on the album alongside Niclas Andersson. The riffs on the album bounce between being melodic and standard black metal and, while none of them are particularly complex, they are varied and memorable. The bass work on the album is handled by Anders Backelin and is surprisingly audible for a black metal album. The bass on the album plays an important role in filling out the bottom end of the band’s sound. The drums on the album are handled by Micke Backelin and they are the sole complaint I have about Enter the Moonlight Gate. The drumming on the album is pretty unvaried and repetitive. The fast parts of the album are backed by endless blast beats that sometimes go on for upwards of two minutes without any fills which can be kind of annoying. Despite this, the playing is still pretty tight overall which prevents it from being too much of a distraction.

Despite all of these positives, there are people who write off this album and band as B grade Dissection worship, but personally I do not think that this is a fair assessment. Other than some superficial similarities (like melodic riffs), I don’t think that the bands are very similar at all. Even if they are, there are far worse bands that you could copy. In the end, Lord Belial has crafted an excellent black metal album with Enter the Moonlight Gate that is considered a classic for a reason. I would highly recommend Enter the Moonlight Gate to any black metal fan who is looking for a unique album. Aside from this, the album is also accessible to people who are new to the black metal genre since the production isn’t even remotely harsh or lo-fi and all of the instruments can be clearly heard throughout the album’s duration.

Originally written for www.sputnikmusic.com under my alternate username.

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.

The most enticing aspect of the mid 90s black metal era was its unique blend of dark yet ethereal imagery and multifaceted musical expressions. Simultaneously, what was beginning to anger all of the purists at the onset of the 3rd wave was an innovative exploration of somewhat different territory, which found the style incorporating a number of consonant and even angelic elements to complement the malevolent nature of its early 90s roots via the 2nd wave. Some might point to the transitional character of Emperor's "In The Nightside Eclipse" and Enslaved's "Vkingligr Veldi", both of which played quite extensively with the technical side of things and brought a denser atmosphere into the equation by incorporating keyboard ambiences and even some acoustic elements that tended toward the Viking era of Bathory.

A much overlooked adherent to the early 3rd wave in Sweden that was taking a good number of cues from the atmospheric and melodic side of the Norwegian sound was that of Lord Belial. While often pegged as being a throwback to the early 90s Swedish death metal scene that simply took on a black metal exterior for purposes of hopping on a growing trend (an accusation also thrown at Darkthrone), they presented an interesting take on the black metal aesthetic that kept a lingering technical and ambitious element from the death metal scene in question. "Enter The Moonlight Gate" stands as their magnum opus, an album that maintains the same remnant of death/thrash heard on "Kiss The Goat", but perfecting the otherworldly atmospheric sound more indicative of a full out black metal band, and likewise abandoning the plain album art more suited to early Bathory with something much closer to the 1994 Norwegian sound it seeks to capture.

This isn't a full out symphonic effort after the mold of Limbonic Art, as the mystical image of a moonlit palace might suggest, but rather a fast and furious assault with a good side order of melody and intrigue. Things take on a familiar mixture of violent death metal riffing with an equal mixture of shimmering tremolo lines and mournful melodic interludes, culminating in a very engaging and versatile listening experience. There is an occasional echo of the folk-like flute and keyboard melodies heard on the debut, as well as a newly adopted angelic female foil to Dark's now more orc-like and sepulchral mutterings. The female vocalist in question was an unknown named Marielle Andersson, whom would provide further vocal work on a couple of subsequent releases, and graces a largely vile and vindictive sound with an air of innocence, almost akin to a graceful swan gliding amid a pitch black swamp.

While this album definitely does a good job of channeling the most pristine and beautiful elements of the proto-melodic black metal character of a number of founding fathers in the Norwegian 2nd wave, the element that gives this album its uniqueness is ultimately the remaining strain of death metal conservatism that was largely abandoned by most black metal bands by 1996. Particularly in the cases of the frenetic deluge of riffs and blast beats that is "Unholy Spell Of Lilith" and the epic closer "Realm Of A Thousand Burning Souls", the technical soloing and wild guitar noise that tended to typify the lead material of the late 80s Florida death metal sound, and equivalent influences reflected in the parallel Swedish scene in the early 90s, makes a number of auspicious appearances, taking the listener aback given that this sort of Kerry King inspired mayhem was not widely displayed even on Enslaved's works.

In the grand scheme of things, this album shares some very impressive company, as the albums that tend to come to mind when hearing this are Satyricon's "Nemesis Divina" and Emperor's "In The Nightside Eclipse", along with a number of later Immortal albums that would lean in a bit more of a death metal meets Viking sounding direction. It doesn't get quite the same level of attention that said albums tend to given the band's later entry into the game, not to mention some lingering divisions amongst 2nd wave purists who don't go for this much consonance and present day commercial fans who prefer hearing Dimmu Borgir's highly polished take on the style, underscoring the pitfall of being in between 2 radically different extremes. But for those who came to love black metal for its ability to cross boundaries and avoid clichés, this is something that rivals much of what are regarded as the essential classics.

From the moment you hit 'play', the album literally beckons you with the opening line: "Enter the Moonlight Gate!". From there you are pummeled with blisteringly fast power chords, ferocious blast beats and some of the harshest black metal shrieks your ears ever had the misfortune to be exposed to. I can really only liken the experience to being attacked by some beast in the wilderness. Speaking of which, they make really good use o voice distortion near the end of the song, which is set against the female vocals the is sung directly after that part. I know you’re probably thinking of writing this album off as some cheesy gothic-rock, because of that last statement - believe me they are used quite tastefully here. Anyways, back to the song: despite audio onslaught the opening track perpetuates, there is a constant underflow of melody (this is apparent throughout the remainder of the song). Only a few bands have ever pulled this off so cleanly: Dawn, Sacramentum\ (earlier works), and Dissection to name a few. This song continues on with a few more surprises - you hear some neat little hammer-ons being played (very uncommon in traditional black metal), a neat little section where a timing change occurs and the music slows down to accentuate the female vocals, and you even hear one of those typical death-metal-fuck-you-in-the-ears-with-my-whammy bar solo. Yes Belial has it all, as made apparent by the opening track. The rest of them are just as brilliant. Seriously, with an album like this I could just continue on to talk about every single track but that would just incite an excessively long review, instead I’ll just recap some of the highlights found here:

Lamia. Yes I know this is probably the one that people would consider the “anthem” off the album, but shit it’s for damned good reason. This album not only has some of the catchiest melodic lines heard in any metal song ever produced, but it also contains a diverse array of instrumentation. The track opens up with a grief-soaked violin line, flows into some dreary black metal lines - with the drumming at some point intensifying to some double-bass workout, and then flowing into almost folk style riffing overlaid with some really gentle flute playing (giving this track a really epic feel). Again, this track goes into a break, but this time it goes into some eerie riff using a diminished scale. The track continues with onward ferocity, and is capped off by some gentle acoustic playing. Again, an excellent display of dynamics.

Forlorn in Silence. With how this track is integrated, Lord Belial can be likened to many of the thrash bands of the 80’s (Metallica, Testament, Kreator etc.), in that they actually devote a whole track to an instrumental halfway through the album. This track is purely acoustic and is very folk sounding. Basically it’s two classical guitars playing a very complex, intertwining melody, and to be honest - it's too beautiful to accurately describe. At some point in this track these is whispered vocals which really drive the home mood of despair. Despite this being the softest track it is probably the most emotionally driven, as it seeks to provide introspection or at least a break from all the brutality. Nonetheless, the effect of having such a dramatic change really does increase the impact of this song.

Realm of a Thousand Burning Souls, Part I. Alright, the first glaring reason that I chose this track is well…because…It’s 20 minutes long! I could stop there, but really this track does merit so much more than then being 38% of the album. It’s absolutely brilliant. It opens up with some sort of black thrash riff (actually somewhat reminded of later Necrophobic by this one in particular), and then flowing into the volatile black metal ever-present in this album. It then goes into some gentle acoustic part with spoken/whispered parts. After that, it continues on with the same ferocity, but with more melody. Several minutes later, another break occurs. This one has some layered chanting vocals, and some dissonant acoustic lead played over the black metal riffs -lending a creepy feel to the track. This track continues on with some droning black metal (no I don’t mean the track is boring - it’s intentional). Further into the track, the female vocals appear again this time wailing in despair. At this point the vocals sound like a desperate cry. The part following soon after is probably the only weak point of the album: 5-6 minutes of silence. However, it ends in a cool way: tribal style drumming with faint chanting in the background. This part acts as an omen that Lord Belial will return to beat you senseless. This track pretty much sums up the brilliance of this album.

Overall this is a beast of an offering from LB. It’s a shame overall that this one was so overlooked. I guess at the time of the album’s release black metal was seemingly taking a more experimental route. Bands like Borknagar, Emperor, and Satyricon starting to make drastic changes in sound, and it seemed like LB was hanging on too closely the old ways for anyone to take notice. That probably was the cause of them switching to a more death metal oriented style later on (which was still good, but not classic like this).Even so, this album is one of those rare moments in music in which the overall strength of the album lies in craftsmanlike song construction, as opposed to strength being the band’s ability to experiment. This album tantalizes you with beautiful melody, ensnares you with its venom tipped hooks, and then drags you down with the weight of its melancholy. This is a masterpiece that truly needs to be heard by anyone who considers themselves a fan of the extreme metal genre.

Many people consider this to be the best Lord Belial record, so I was quite surprised that reviews for this one were pretty hard to come by. Anyway, this is the first LB album I heard and it's damn good.

"Enter the Moonlight Gate" starts the album and it's quite brutal, at times closer to death metal than anything. But then some very good female vocals appear (sounding very much like Beseeches Lotta Höglin, but i doubt it's her, since she was probably too young when this was released) and some doomier parts appear here and there.

The whole album itself is quite brutal and very fast, dominated by blastbeats, lightning fast tremolo picking and screeching/growling vocals. Exceptions are "Forlorn in Silence", a fabulous acoustic piece with intricate licks and just an awesome overall atmosphere, "Path With Endless Horizons" and "Lamia" - both feature great melodic guitars and good female vocal additions.

Production is good, though it lacks a bit of bass presence and the drums tend to be a bit too loud. No major faults.

I heard that Lord Belial were slowing down and sacrificing a lot of heaviness with their more recent releases, which can't be good, since heaviness is one of the main essences in LBs music, but i might try them anyway.

Overall, "Enter the Moonlight Gate" is a very good album and there i something for every extreme metal fan to like. Sometimes, the (though mostly welcome) brutality does get in the way of the sparkling brilliance that appears mainly in the acoustic and melodic parts, but this album is still most definitely recommended.

Highlights: "Enter the Moonlight Gate", "Path With Endless Horizons", "Lamia" and "Forlorn in Silence"