siLLy puPPy WOLFHEART is the debut album by MOONSPELL which incorporates a nice mix of metal styles. Following the approach of their earlier EP “Under The Moonspell,” we get a more refined blend of black and Gothic metal mixed with Celtic folk and symphonic touches. The transition from black metal to Gothic metal is taking place on WOLFHEART as the blackened touches are softened and the Gothic elements are increased. The intro with eerie synths and soft guitar sets the tone and atmosphere of a darkened land where blood thirsty wolves and Pagan rituals dominate with lunar madness.

This album really goes all over the place. It starts out in a symphonic black metal fashion but has tracks such as “Lua D’Inverno” that sound more like Pagan Celtic rituals. The vocals are heavily in the Goth department and Fernando Ribeiro’s vocals play the perfect part of a blood sucking romeo and bring other Gothic metal bands of the day to mind such as Type O Negative, Tiamat and early Paradise Lost. The song structures are well laid out with aggressive and the lush sensual symphonic parts working well together. The female backing vocals by Birgit Zacher are particularly haunting.

WOLFHEART is a very consistent album and it’s a testament to an era when various styles of metal were mixing with various forms of folk music and symphonic touches. MOONSPELL displays a strong command of this hybridity and becomes one of the most successful metal exports from Portugal. While some Gothic metal barely falls into the metal category focusing more on the romantic and sensual rather than the head banging aspects, WOLFHEART displays everything that makes a great Gothic metal album while retaining some excellent black metal aggressive fury as well without going as far as adding blastbeats or turning up the fury to up to extreme levels.

Warthur Moonspell's debut album is an interesting blend of disparate forms of metal, taking a gothic metal base and jazzing it up by sprinkling on black metal and symphonic metal influences and lashing all these bits together in a progressive framework, and then cramming on the odd gentle folky moment here and there for good measure.

Although I'm really not into the vocals (with the notable exception of Birgit Zacher's female vocals), on the whole the album is an entertaining listen which shows an excellent command of various approaches to metal, and the band do an excellent job of integrating these various styles without making their compositions sound disjointed or incoherent.

kluseba Wolfheart is easily one of my favourite records of all time. It has anything I would expect from a great metal album. It has a lot of diversity. It has an intense and coherent atmosphere. It has interesting lyrics that fit to the concept of the music and artwork. It has many catchy moments but also some more progressive and epic tracks. It has aged well and grows on you every time you try it out once again. It has its own unique charm and doesn't sound too much like anyone else.

Wolfheart has also been a revolutionary album being one of the first extreme metal records coming from Southern Europe. The band is right to be proud to come from a country where metal music isn't as popular as in Central and Northern Europe and they don't hesitate to perform parts of several songs in Portuguese. They also use a few folk instruments which give an epic touch to this debut record without sounding too soft and sweet. On the other hand, there is a big gothic influence in this record concerning the bleak atmosphere and the dark lyrics. Many people consider this album as a black metal record but this style is only one of several subtle elements and influences among others. The band mixes energy and majesty in a unique way without forgetting about originality.

Every song is worth to be listened to and there is no single filler on here. The harmonic and epic introduction to the great opening epic "Wolfshade (A Werewolf Masquerade)" immediately drowns us into a mysterious atmosphere and digs us deeper into a bleak majesty when the dark lyrics kick off. The keyboards and choirs may sound a little bit artificial as the band lacked of budget but this gives an undeniable charm to the record and makes it sound more underground and mysterious. In the first track the band already proves all of their talent. The singer switches from dark shrieks to low melodic clean vocals. The track has some chilling moments that focus on decent keyboard melodies, harmonic guitar passages and a surprisingly audible bass guitar line. On the other side, there are also more rhythm orientated mid tempo passages and a floating progressive bridge. Everything underlines the focus on a dark and addicting atmosphere and sounds very coherent. That's only what I say about the first track but I could continue like this for every other song on the record.

There are many magic moments on this album. "Trebaruna" is an amazingly hypnotizing folk track and pleases me at least ten times more than anything most of the so-called modern folk bands from Northern Europe use to play. I mean those guys here come from Portugal and perform dark folk beats as if they have grown up with Viking history and Scandinavian folk tales. The great bonus track "Ataegina" has some great Lusitanian folk elements and is able to mix happy and positive chants with mysterious folk sounds and dark riffs. Who needs Eluveitie now? The female shrieks in the end of "Vampiria" give me goose bumps every time I listen to them once again and are an unforgettable moment in metal history. The Portuguese chorus of the addicting "Alma Mater" is not only catchy as hell but also a true statement by the band.

There are so many whining people that claim that the eighties were such a great decade while the nineties were the downfall of metal music. Every time I listen to Moonspell's "Wolfheart", Amorphis' "Tales From The Thousand Lakes" or Therion's "Theli" I realize that this is not true and that the nineties even seem to have the greater gems. This is one of them and a definite must have for any metal fan of any genre.