Ever since their sounds of icy fury first reached my ears early last year, Finland’s Moonlight Sorcery is a band I’ve been absolutely hooked on. Taking a melodic/symphonic black metal base and adding mountains of massive shred guitar solos, debut EP Piercing Through the Frozen Eternity quickly became my favorite release of 2022 with the way it combined intense black metal riffs and atmosphere with classic heavy metal bombast. They soon followed up with a second great EP — Nightwind: The Conqueror from the Stars — which saw the band up the ante even more in terms of technical ability. At the end of this month the band will be releasing their highly anticipated debut full-length Horned Lord of the Thorned Castle, the culmination of everything they have been building up to so far. The trio were kind enough to answer a number of my questions about their inspirations and the road leading up to the full-length. Read about this and more after the jump…

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Hello and thank you for taking the time to speak with us! Please introduce yourselves.

Loitsumestari Taikakallo (LT): I’m the lead guitarist and main composer of the band.

Haaska: I have been friends with LT since 2017 I think and we have had many evenings together scouring through all kinds of music. Through him I also got acquainted with Ruttomieli since they have longer history together. I am the rhythm guitarist in the band and also take part in composition and some of the lyrics together with LT and Ruttomieli. I have also had I guess you could say the leading role for the visual side of things although everything will be agreed upon as a team effort in the end.

Ruttomieli: The vocalist and the main lyricist. Me and Haaska share duties building the image of the band.

Moonlight Sorcery formed in 2018, yet the wider world wasn’t exposed to your music until early 2022. Was your now signature sound of melodic/symphonic black metal with shredding solos always the goal, or were there any earlier incarnations of your music that sounded different?

LT: That was pretty much the goal in the first place. Fusing old school heavy metal with black metal vocals and adding shredding guitar work on top of that. 

Haaska: After hearing the first 2 demos LT and Ruttomieli had made, the vision for the music became pretty clear and I have also been following it with my own input.

Ruttomieli: Yes, the goal was to make black metal with a little shredding twist in the first place.

Was the response to Piercing Through the Frozen Eternity upon release last February anywhere close to what you anticipated, and did the album start gaining traction quickly? For me it took a couple weeks for the album to come across my radar through Bandcamp (thanks to following the personal account of the wonderful Austin Lunn of Panopticon), and I was hooked from the first time I heard “For Thy Light Is Ice.”

LT: We had zero expectations how our music would hit the people. We just wanted to try to make something different in the black metal scene and pretty quickly it turned out that people really liked our stuff. I guess it started to spread among people fast and messages about our future releases started to flow into our email.

Haaska: It was way bigger than anything we had anticipated. Things started moving really fast and I think after the first single was released we have pretty much been working full speed. I don’t even know how we managed to captivate such a big audience from the start but we are really satisfied with how things turned out.

Ruttomieli: Haha, I just wanted to make a demo recording, get signed and release something worthy. I didn’t have any other expectations.

Going back to Nightwind: The Conqueror from the Stars, the instrumental track “Constellations” was the biggest and most welcome surprise for me. What was the inspiration behind the creation of this song?

LT: Inspiration came mostly from the video game series called “Castlevania”. It could easily be a track in the game series where someone from the Belmont clan is making his/her way to the dracula’s castle and in the end slaying the dracula to his death.

Loitsumestari, who are some of your biggest guitar heroes, and more specifically who are some of your biggest influences on your composing and soloing with Moonlight Sorcery?

LT: Oh, I have some many guitar heroes who I look up to but if I’d pick top 5 it would be: Buckethead, Paul Gilbert, Eric Johnson, Glen Tipton and Hank Marvin. I don’t think that my influences change no matter what kind of material I write. I like to listen to all kinds of music so influences come from almost every genre of music. Top 5 bands that have had a huge impact on my composing could be: Dio, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Helloween and Kalmah.

Related to the earlier question, “Constellations” and a number of elements on Horned Lord of the Thorned Castle are very reminiscent of a deceased countryman of yours who inspired a whole generation of guitarists. How does the legacy of Alexi Laiho impact Moonlight Sorcery?

LT: Of course you can’t deny the influence of early Bodom albums, but for me Bodom was always a full band, not just Alexi Laiho. But I guess Laiho has influenced through Bodom’s music on the composing part, but personally I was always more looking for influences from Janne Wirman’s keyboard playing. The goal still has always been to write something as original as possible. World is full of Alexi Laiho doppelgängers who want to look and sound exactly like him and that has never been my goal. I got the honor once to share the stage with him and have a few words, he was a really nice person and has deserved all the respect he gained during the years, rest in peace.

Haaska: Even though I am nowhere near the technical level I could also say Children of Bodom has been a huge part of my youth and has influenced the way I see music in full. I still go back to the music every now and again, especially the older albums.

Ruttomieli: I’d say that Children of Bodom’s older albums have influenced me as much as other contemporary Finnish black/death bands.

I really enjoy the Deep Purple cover on the Burning Embrace single. What was the reasoning behind choosing “Burn” specifically, and are there any plans for future Moonlight Sorcery takes on bands influential to you? (If you plan on revisiting any Ritchie Blackmore work, I for one would love to see a rendition of Rainbow’s “A Light in the Black”).

LT: “A Light in the Black” has been on my mind for some of my other projects. That is an amazing song! ‘Dio era‘ of Blackmore’s work has had a big influence on me because for me Ronnie James Dio is one of the best vocalists ever. But “Burn” picked up as a cover mostly because of Jon Lord’s keyboard solo. Again Deep Purple is another band where I mostly admired more of the keyboard work than the guitar work. We have had some ideas for the future covers and I think we’re not gonna cover more of Blackmore’s work with Moonlight Sorcery.

Haaska: We have been discussing many different songs together that could be cool ones to do cover work on. I think it is kind of boring for a black metal band to make covers of black metal songs so we want to do something different. There are many great songs already been covered that we have also had interest in but I think in the end we just want to do something new and give it our own personal touch.

Thinking about the evolution of your sound between Frozen Eternity through to Nightwind and now Horned Lord is that not just the solos, but the riffs have grown increasingly more melodic and technical. Was this a conscious decision in the song- and riff-writing process?

LT: As a musician you always want to push yourself forward and progress on your technical playing skills and composing. So I think it is natural that the songs and the playing has changed from the first release. And hopefully it has gone in a more ”impressive” direction, at least it is great to hear from you that the stuff has gone more technical. Thank you for that, it means a lot! The hunger to improve is huge and hopefully on the next album we have progressed a little bit forward again as musicians.

Haaska: I think progression and evolution is bound to happen but I still think the material is pretty similar after all. Maybe the newer production brings more of the technical side in the front but everything soundwise has always been a conscious decision.

“Yönsilmä” and “Into the Silvery Shadows of Night” are two tracks on Horned Lord that stand out as being less heavy and and intense, while still feeling authentically like Moonlight Sorcery (the latter track could qualify as your version of a power ballad, if I may be so bold). Did having the runtime of a full-length allow for more freedom to include songs such as these?

LT: Power ballad is a perfect categorization for ”Into the Silvery Shadows of Night!” ‘Slower’ songs have always had a weak spot on me. “Fade to Black” is still in my opinion one of the best ‘power ballads’ ever written. Wish I could someday write a song as great as that. But the runtime hasn’t had anything to do with the songs being on the album. We have already introduced our ‘ballad’ part of the band on the song ”Hauta-alttari” so I don’t think it is a big surprise to get slower ballad songs from us.

Haaska: I don’t think it has that much to do with freedom of a full-length or anything like that because we pretty much just create the kind of music we want to create and show to people. I think the material is pretty much perfect from the first track to the last one and they all fit together while still sounding completely familiar. We also have some more aggressive riffs and stuff prepared for some point in the future but the important thing to me is to make all the songs with together to really make a complete album and not just single tracks one after another.

Ruttomieli: In my opinion, it would be boring if the whole album was a constant blast. Diversity, but not totally out of place things. Lyrics for “Into Silvery Shadows of Night” were originally intended for a funeral doom project but when I heard LT’s composition, I wanted to use it with Moonlight Sorcery.

What are some of your favorite albums (metal or non-metal) released so far in 2023?

LT: I honestly haven’t listened to that much new music this year since I have been working on writing and recording a bunch of music myself. Savant’s “Krang” has been a great electronic music album this year. Sonja’s “Loud Arriver” was perfect heavy metal album! But I just checked and that already came out in 2022.

Haaska: I have pretty much been listening to older stuff lately but Rytmihäiriö’s “Surmacore” album that came a few weeks ago was really good. Cattle Decaptiation’s “Terrasite” was also one pretty impressive album. Had to cheat a bit and actually check what albums have even been released in 2023 but now that I gave myself a reminder I think “Black Medium Current” by Dødheimsgard must be one of my favourites. “As in Gardens, So in Tombs” by …And Oceans was also really good as was Ondfødt’s “Det Österbottniska Mörkret.”

Ruttomieli: This year has introduced me to Crown Lands’ “Fearless” which is awesome hard prog, Lars Fredrik Frøislie’s “Fire Fortellinger” has some great symphonic prog, and Colter Wall’s country on “Little Songs” is near perfect. The year’s best metal album is Lamp of Murmuur’s “Saturnian Bloodstorm”.

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer our questions! Frozen Eternity blasted its way to the top of my AOTY list for 2022, and watching the band garner more attention and evolve since has been really great to witness. Any future plans you’d like to tease beyond Horned Lord of the Thorned Castle?

LT: Thank you! Was really nice to answer your questions. We have had a kinda fast pace on the releases so we are gonna sit down and take some time out of the Moonlight Sorcery for a while but I bet riffs and songs will still be made even though we take a little break here with actually recording anything new.

Haaska: Second full-length is bound to happen at some point but no schedule for it has been decided yet. There is already material ready for that album but we need to take a small breather after this release.

Ruttomieli: Thank you! We’re going to sit down, relax for a while and gather some inspiration. No hurry for the next recording, comes when the time is ripe.

Eternal hails to Moonlight Sorcery for their time!

— Colin

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Horned Lord of the Thorned Castle will be available September 29 on Avantgarde Music. For more information on Moonlight Sorcery, visit their Facebook and Instagram pages.

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