Band:	Ringarë
Album:	Under Pale Moon
Style:	Atmospheric black metal
Release date:	March 08, 2019
A review by:	nikarg

01. Under Pale Moon
02. Sorrow Under Starry Sky
03. In Nocturnal Agony
04. Through Forest And Fog

If you are a frequent visitor around these premises, you probably have noticed [url= http://www.metalstorm.net/users/Apothecary/profile]this lad's[/url] adoration of Alex Poole, a very busy and talented musician involved in many projects such as Krieg, Skáphe, Entheogen and Guðveiki, to name a few. Of all his bands, it's Chaos Moon that clicks with me the most, especially the first couple of albums, so the release of material that has been exhumed from that era is pretty exciting news to my ears.

Ringarë, originally going by the moniker Ringar, formed in 2004 and much of the material composed was used in Chaos Moon's Languor Into Echoes, Beyond. The remainder of the never-released Ringarë debut stayed buried for nearly 15 years and just recently saw the light of day. Not a very bright light, that is.

The cover art is a black and white image of mountains with a pale yellow moon on the top right corner, looking like it was made by a dot matrix printer and the way it's designed reminds me a little of Resurrection Extract. The logo is unreadable, as it should, and the music is synth-ridden, second-wave worshipping black metal that relies heavily on its cold and grim atmosphere. The album blends primal hostility and grave ambience, and sounds completely Bergen-originating rather than Pennsylvania-based. If someone told you it was recorded back in the mid-nineties in a cabin in the woods under the northern lights, you sure as hell would have been convinced.

Under Pale Moon is a throwback to the time when Dimmu Borgir unleashed the magnificent Stormblåst and had not yet become the demon cheeseburger of the 21st century, when Emperor were a symphonic black metal band that was at the same time trve and kvlt (Alex Poole talks about Emperor's influence on him in [url= http://www.metalstorm.net/pub/interview.php?interview_id=752]this interview[/url]), and when Varg was creating majestic dark and atmospheric soundscapes instead of delusional YouTube videos.

The album sounds like it was recorded with equipment not much more sophisticated than my vintage Toshiba boombox and this only adds to its nostalgic character. Despite this, the music can be fully enjoyed and even though the synths are the focal point here, the bass is equally gorgeous, especially if you listen with headphones, and the vocals are terrifying shrieks and howls that scare the shit out of your lost soul.

Shortly after the exhumation of Under Pale Moon, Ringarë also released a couple of ambient demos from 2003-04 and 2018 under the title [url= https://ringare.bandcamp.com/album/where-cold-dwells-and-winter-once-lay]Where Cold Dwells And Winter Once Lay[/url], which serves as a fitting, mood-setting accompaniment to the corpsepainted, frostbitten, forest-dwelling [url= https://ringare.bandcamp.com/album/under-pale-moon]Under Pale Moon[/url].

If you dig the first two Chaos Moon albums, you really should check Ringarë's debut out.