Moenen Of Xezbeth – Ancient Spells Of Darkness...

Before they embark upon their careers of global domination, the teen Electric Wizard meet the spotty Emperor in a forest and hold a seance to summon up the ghost of Sixtus IV. This album is the spawn of that necromantic ritual. It is some dark and twisted sh*t, with apparently ancient, crusty ambience and very primitive dungeon synth playing and galumphing rhythms. This album summons up atmosphere with ease: the atmosphere of misled teens experimenting with potions and bones in a graveyard or forest in some forgotten eon. The hyperbolic faux naivete is hilarious and the tunes hummable. The weakness of the album is rhythmic. Like so much metal, it devolves to a beery and bearish barndance waltz, as clumsy as a drunken brawl in a dockyard slum bar. The question that arises is whether Moenen are deliberately playing simplistically to summon up atmosphere, or whether they actually just don't play that well?