Moonspell
From Down Below – Live 80 Meters Deep – Napalm Records
The road to metal Valhalla is paved with exemplary live albums, so it takes something special for a record to join those hallowed ranks. Enter stage left Portuguese gothic metalheads Moonspell with their latest offering Live 80 Meters Deep. Never a band to do things by halves, this release finds them deep underground (in a cave no less), and performing their latest album to a select group of fans. Moonspell proceed to play their last studio album in full, and this cavernous venue perfectly suits the band’s Floydian soundscapes. While you won’t find the cuts from Hermitage acting in strange new ways, this environment adds new dimensions to familiar songs. Take the title-track for example, it benefits from a bassier bottom end, and without all the layers that cluttered the studio version it become more direct and punchier. The bombastic ‘Entitlement’ does indeed sound as if recorded at the ocean’s depths, and its waves ululate over the listener like driftwood kissing the shore, and you have no choice to succumb to its irresistible pull. Some may question a full rendition of Hermitage so soon after its 2021 release, but in this context, it makes perfect sense, and Live 80 Meters Deep is destined to enter the empyrean halls of classic live albums.
Review by Peter Dennis