Limited to 500 copies: 200x black vinyl, 300x yellow-in-sea-blue vinyl.
A cosmic journey through shadow and grandeur—reissued for a new generation of listeners.
When Moon in the Scorpio emerged in 1996, Limbonic Art didn’t just debut—they conjured an entire soundscape from the void. While much of the symphonic black metal movement was leaning into either bombast or aggression, this Norwegian duo carved out their own dimension—one where bleak grandeur, spectral keyboards, and hypnotic repetition collided to form something haunting and cinematic. Nearly three decades later, the album has lost none of its eerie pull.
Opening with the massive “Beneath the Burial Surface,” the album immediately signals its ambitions. Clocking in at over 13 minutes, the track doesn’t rush to establish its atmosphere—it builds patiently, layering somber synth lines with whispered vocals and distant tremolo riffs. It’s not about immediacy; it’s about immersion. The drum machine, often a point of contention in black metal circles, actually enhances the album’s mechanical, otherworldly aura. Its steady, sometimes rigid cadence allows the swirling keyboards and foggy guitars to float like cosmic debris across an endless night sky.
Limbonic Art’s approach isn’t about traditional riff-driven metal. Instead, the guitars blur into the overall texture, serving as a shadowy backbone to the ever-shifting keyboards. These synths don’t merely support the music—they are the music, often dominating with melodies that feel more like movements from a dark symphony than backing tracks. In pieces like “In Mourning Mystique,” these layers become overwhelming in the best possible way. It’s a piece that breathes and contracts, shifting from ghostly ambience to solemn majesty over its 14-minute span.
What sets Moon in the Scorpio apart is its unapologetic commitment to theatricality. The entire album feels like a gothic space opera—a journey through voids where ancient spells are recited under planetary alignments. Morfeus’ keyboards craft not just melodies but moods: regal, funereal, menacing. And while Daemon’s vocals are rooted in the harsh black metal tradition, their placement and cadence often make them feel like ritualistic proclamations rather than typical screams.
Certain moments hint at a broader narrative or unspoken lore. The tolling bells and celestial swells in the title track, for instance, feel like sonic milestones within a larger mythos. The bonus track “Dark Rivers of the Heart,” though absent from all versions, serves as a brilliant denouement—an elegiac, regal coda that should’ve been mandatory on every release. It offers closure the official tracklist lacks, giving the album a final chapter it fully deserves.
Criticisms about song length or repetitive structures do surface from time to time, but that repetition is a key part of the record’s hypnotic pull. Limbonic Art isn't interested in quick payoffs or catchy hooks; they invite listeners into a slow-burning experience that reveals more with each return.
If there's one label that fits Moon in the Scorpio, it’s not simply “symphonic black metal.” The album transcends that. It’s symphonic dark metal in the truest sense—a monumental and meditative work that stares into the void and dares you to follow.
Still unmatched in tone and scope, Moon in the Scorpio remains a cold-burning gem in the Norwegian pantheon, a masterpiece that drifts somewhere between funeral rites and astral projection.
