Never compare your new album to your masterpiece. Not in the press release. Not in interviews. Never. Fernando Ribeiro called Far From God “Moonspell’s 21st century Irreligious”, Napalm printed it on everything, and in doing so the band handed every listener a measuring stick that only points down.
Look at the scoreboard. Dom Lawson at Blabbermouth gave it a 90 and called it “bold and brave enough to be regarded as, at the very least, one of their most significant statements.” Distorted Sound went 80. Then gravity kicks in: Angry Metal Guy 70, Metal Hammer 60, Sputnikmusic 56. The critic aggregate on Album of the Year sits at 71 across five reviews. The users, all ninety-three of them at the time of writing, settled on 62.
A 28-point gap between the most enthusiastic professional and the crowd. That gap is the most interesting thing about this release, and I do not think it is about the music at all.
Here is what I think happened. The critics who scored high reviewed the album in front of them: a dramatic, gothic, deeply Moonspell record from a band 30-plus years in. The listeners reviewed the sentence on the sticker. If you tell people this is the new Irreligious, they will play it next to Irreligious. Nobody survives that A/B test. Not even Moonspell. Opium and Full Moon Madness were lightning in a very specific 1996 bottle, and asking a 2026 record to out-flash them is asking to lose.
The counting says everything about the era. The press cannot even agree whether this is album thirteen or fourteen. When your catalogue is that deep, “return to form” marketing stops being a promise and starts being a trap.
And the shame of it: the record did not need the sticker. Paradise Lost never had to call anything their new Draconian Times. Time did that for them, thirty-one years on, and the album only grew. That is how legacy works. You do not get to name your own classic. The listeners do, a decade later, without asking you.
Play Far From God without the press release. It is a good Moonspell album. That used to be enough.
