Review by Felix on January 29, 2023.

"My Soft Vision in Blood" is a song on Austria's Abigor from the year 1994. Now another band from the land of the mountains gives its debut nearly exactly the same name. Is that clever? Anyway, on their debut Northmoon do not spread the innovative, fresh breeze of the first Abigor outputs. Here everything sounds pretty usual, mostly even predictable. You get what you expect after having seen the stylish artwork: typical black metal with nagging, insidious vocals, cold guitar lines and drums between mid- and up-tempo. Northmoon do not see any sense in many twists and turns, the songs are rather repetitive. That's no big problem, because the guitar lines can pride themselves on a solid level. But sometimes they fail to create the necessary degree of depth, the black maelstrom that takes everything with it. The opener, for instance, holds some solid parts, but also instrumental sections that sound more or less harmless instead of opening the gates to hell. Thus, the first song which really draws me into the album is on the fourth position of the list, the dubiously titled 'Black Metal Wolves Of Iron And Chaos' (Thank God, this song name is free from any clichés...). This epic number with a length of more than seven minutes shows more facets than the first tracks, inter alia due to some solemn vocal parts.

The production wants to find the balance between underground low-fidelity and the necessary amount of impact. Okay, this vision could be realised (at the expense of the pretty sterile cardboard drum sound). All in all, I would prefer a higher degree of pressure and force. Nevertheless, this is still an acceptable sound for this form of acoustic warfare. Guess it does not make much sense to present ordinary, mid-harsh black metal with an extraordinary mix.

But it would have been a good idea to work a bit more on the arrangements of the songs. Especially the abrupt end of 'Infernal Paths Of Sinister Cosmic Devotion' or the fading out of 'Astral Darkness And Unholy Worship' seem crude. But let's forget the details. After all, Northmoon do not add any new aspect to the style they prefer and due to some rather mild sections their material suffers from a lack of intensity. Nevertheless, they have resilient compositional skills and intersperse some straightforward, sharp-riffing sections occasionally, for example in 'Clandestine Deathwish'. Furthermore, as far as I can see, they do not lack integrity or devotion. And no, they do not sound like Abigor, but their band name was probably chosen due to their affinity for Finnish black metal. Fans of Shadow's Mortuary or Black Beast will like this work and I agree: it's okay. However, I don't think that Shadowlord... will get a very prominent place in the annals of the constantly proliferating sub-genre. The shadowlord himself stands in the shadows of other albums.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10