When talking about little-known masterpieces that should have become metal icons without this happening due to a series of unfortunate adverse circumstances, it is better to be as concise as possible. Curiosity stimulates and tickles the need to proceed with listening to recover what has been carelessly overlooked. THE ThirdMoon they are (or were? I don’t know, the latest album – the sixth – was released in 2018, eleven years after the previous one Dimorphic Cynosure; who knows if they are still actually active as Metal Archives certifies) an Austrian group born in 1994 in the wake of Abigor with the intention of proposing melodic, impactful and evil black metal, comparable or attributable to that of their famous countrymen.
Produced by the small but very active label CCP records, led by Claus Prellinger, prodigious discoverer of various talents (DornenReich, Orphaned Land – he published their demo – Astaroth, Gergovia, The Bishop of Hexen, Love Lies Bleeding just to name a few of the most important), ThirdMoon (whose name can be found both attached and detached) have always and only made Madonna records. Tense, fast, technical, always devoted to the melodic/atmospheric, never banal or redundant, the boys already moved on to Napalm records with their second album when it was not yet the purveyor of petalous stuff as it would later become. However, poorly regarded given the level of their music which (Summoning aside) was leveling off towards a worse situation that seems to never end, the boys gave up and moved to FM records, a small Greek label that mostly reprints old things out of print. For them they record the masterpiece in question, Sworn Enemy: Heaven.
The style of the album is frankly indescribable, it’s as if i Dream Theater had set up a side project to bring what was exalted in to more extreme shores When Dream and Day Unite. Impossible melodies, sudden breaks from every instrument, flamenco, jazz, progressive, hard rock, thrash, melodic death, a pinch of black metal, odd tempos, high speeds, then immediately after silence, or anything else possible, constant overdubs of three or four guitar tracks with orchestral expertise, almost no keyboards… The album is a marvel because, even if formally divided into ten songs, it seems like a brilliant, very long 47-minute suite. The only thing that deviates from the American style is the use of the voice in moderate growl/scream (it is also clean, however) in addition to the very few keyboards. Everything else is pure enjoyment. It can be found incredibly cheap on Discogs, otherwise you can find all their production on their Bandcamp and I highly recommend it. Don’t be fooled by the covers, they’ve never been too lucky with that. Do yourself a favor and listen to them, yes. (Griffar)
