Moonspell recently stopped in Montréal on their XXX tour, celebrating their 30 years of existence, and they brought along some new blood in the Swedish heavy hitters known as Eleine.
It felt like a sauna in Petit Campus, and although it was very nicely packed for an opener, I’m sure the venue was having trouble with gauging the temperature outside. This was the Swedish dark symphonic metal band’s first tour of North America, but with the number of people presents solely for them, you’d be safe to assume it was at least their third.
Their rising notoriety is partly due to being invited to this year’s 70000 Tons of Metal cruise, while I believe the other part may be due to the band taking advantage of streaming on Twitch during the pandemic. With a heavy focus on their album “Dancing in Hell,” released in 2020, their setlist felt like it struck a great balance in the focus of Madeleine Liljestam’s beautiful clean vocals and Rikard Ekberg’s mix of clean and harsh. Their stage presence was as energetic as their music, and it will be a joy to see them with a longer set in the future.
To be honest, I had never really heard of Moonspell before the show, but I did enjoy some of their set. In my opinion, the headliner should have a similar energy to their opener, and this setlist, while it was solid in its own manner, lacks some of the energy that Eleine had brought to the stage just before them. Moonspell, by the end of their set, wants to lull you slowly into their madness, whereas Eleine kind of grabs you by force.
Moonspell are a great Gothic metal band, and there are no arguments to that. Their set covered all of their 30 years of existence, and the setlist was a testament to their prowess as a Gothic band. Moonspell had a good groove going, but I personally was not getting too far into it at the time. The crowd that was there were hooked by the groove. It’s easy to see why they remained giants of the Goth metal scene with the crowd’s reaction to every song that played and sung from the heart.
Review & photos – Ryan Rumpel
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