Moonloop – Devocean

Moonloop is a Catalan (Barcelona) based progressive & death metal combo. They were formed in 2001, exactly same year as our beloved magazine that you’re reading now. Their music has often been labeled as a challenging mix of Opeth’s catchy arrangements and musical sensibilities, and melodic and yet powerful death metal guitar attacks and bushing drums. Not much has changed (thankfully) on this new 9-tracker opus entitled Devocean.

Devocean is band’s latest offering, yet to be officially released through French-based Listenable Records. This album is varied and diverse featuring both some lengthy predominantly progressive songs such as “Gallery Of Diminished Nightmares” and “Oceans” alongside a very short closing “Sneak Peak”.

Devocean genuinely displays the band’s best work to date. The lyrics are inspired by nature, geology, oceans, ecology, and also personal experiences. I like the interaction and unification of beautiful tunes with the emotions and stories told in the lyrical content. This great mix of death metal brutality combined with some odd time signatures works just fine for me.
The album is very atmospheric and perfectly recorded, without being too clean and clinical. Meanwhile, some might find it challenging and demanding, but after a couple of spins it tends to grow displaying a wide range of beautiful sounds and landscapes. Even the cover art perfectly depicts the whole sound and image of this quartet from Barcelona.

Vocals of Mr. Eric Baulenas range from clean and soft to more growling and shouting ones. Alongside varied vocals one can also hear powerful and technical riffing, aforementioned atmospheric landscapes and almost psychedelic lead guitar passages.
One can easily claim that Devocean is a bit darker and more organic compared to its predecessor.

Devocean definitely puts a smile on my face as I was highly entertained throughout the whole album. If you like music that is full of prog passages and acoustic parts Devocean is definitely something I would recommend.
Esp. for fans of Death & Chuck Schuldiner, Mikael Akerfeldt and his Opeth and the likes of  Meshuggah and Cryptopsy.

For additional info go to: https://www.facebook.com/moonloopband/