When I was first getting into more extreme music, I always appreciated a long album. The “how can less be more, that’s impossible” quote resonated with me on my journey and there are still a few albums I love today that embody that. For the most part though, I’ve shed that part of me. Now, when I see something longer than 80 minutes (especially if it’s Black Metal) I internally groan but get through it. Enter Midnight Odyssey. The king of releasing long albums, and the actual physical embodiment of the Malmsteen quote, Dis Pater has been cranking out long-winded and long-form albums since all the way back in 2011. After the monumental sophomore album in 2015 that clocked in at a whopping 2 hours and 25 minutes, I thought Pater was done with releasing albums of this length. Then, the Biolume trilogy happened. First was Biolume I: In Tartarean Chains, which was a generously subdued affair that had its moments of greatness, but was rather one-note. Then it was Biolume II: The Golden Orb; a much longer affair that let go of the usual Ambient Black Metal sound and was a lot more Epic Heavy Metal influenced, coupled with more instances of Dis Pater’s gothic sounding cleans. Now, the final part of the Biolume trilogy is nigh, and A Fullmoon Madness is a maddeningly exhaustive venture totalling just over two hours. Is this significant length worth your time to soak in the astral laments and cosmic invocations, or is this an ouroboric cycle of exhaustion?
Spanning quite a few genres such as Symphonic Black Metal, Ambient, and a few hints of Epic Heavy Metal, A Fullmoon Madness picks up where The Golden Orb left off. With warm synths, “As Darkness Dims the Fire” is a Midnight Odyssey classic in every definition of the meaning, as the song takes about five of its eleven minute runtime to get going. Not off to a great start. There are, once again, sparse instances where Dis Pater has written some truly compelling stuff, such as the mournful gothic cleans on “A Land Only Death Knows”, the piano driven “Witching Eyes”, or even perhaps the best song from the entire trilogy: the title track. With its early Emperor sound, “A Fullmoon Madness” is a great Symphonic Black Metal song. However, the same principle that severely cuts my enjoyment of other Midnight Odyssey albums rings true with this one: they’re just too damn long. Dis Pater has a tendency to write somewhat interesting material at times, but stretches it out to an amount far longer than it should be. It’s this element that made The Golden Orb almost unreturnable, and I find it harder yet to come back to A Fullmoon Madness. Much like Esoctrilihum in some ways, I’m left frustrated with each spin of this album. It sounds very nice from a production standpoint, the art is gorgeous (thanks to the talents of Elijah Tamu once again) and there is competently written material in places, but it’s two hours long, which is longer than any album has a right to be. Unfortunately, this album proves to be another meandering adventure that has me exhausted well before the journey’s end. But, hope springs eternal. Maybe next time, Midnight Odyssey will get it right.
