Vehemency
It is not only the northern soil of Scandinavia that thrives on ice cold black metal, this has been proved by a plethora of recent groups hailing from southern abodes of America, such as Patria from Brazil. Moonlight is another addition to the list of blizzarding black metal acts from an unusual location, this time from Mexico, offering a full hour of piercing and evil black metal, handled by mere one man.
Rex Diabolos is, indeed, long. And especially too long for its uncompromising style that shows no signs of innovation, following the footsteps of Dark Funeral and Marduk quite closely. But now putting aside the usual nagging about unoriginality for a moment, Ishtar does deliver the shivering tremolo riffs with authenticity, the only complaint being the occasional shredding guitar solos that definitely don’t fit to the album’s overall atmosphere. The solo on the last song ”Sacrilegus Oratio (Part 2)” is, however, pretty damn epic, showing a surprising amount of technical ability that you wouldn’t have guessed beforehand from the otherwise simple black metal. Drums are, unfortunately, programmed but it doesn’t ruin the atmosphere as they’re mixed enough low, giving the riffs their deserved main role.
While the foundation of the traditional black metal is evidently fine here, Rex Diabolos clearly lacks proper highlights. The album does flow nicely, but the compositions do little to affect a listener who’s gone through a million similar albums in the past. Hence it becomes hard to recommend Rex Diabolos to any specific listener base, as newbies to black metal would better look into the innovators from early 90s, and experienced listeners won’t find much, if anything, to rejoice from the album. I’m tempted to go for a two star rating, but perhaps a half star more is vaguely deserved due to the record’s overall playability and non-harassing nature.