There’s a lot that I have come to love about black metal since discovering it in my teens. From the pioneers, like Bathory, who created an evil, ghastly, and grainy sound, to now, where symphonic elements and higher production has squeezed its way in, there are just too many bands to count anymore. Residing from Australia, Moon takes on the atmospheric and depressive side of the genre with the 2013 album, The Nine Gates.

There is a lot to like about Moon from the start. The short instrumental introduction easily sets a haunting tone, with a sort of graveyard like feel. Inhale Darkness bursts forward with keyboard sounding choirs, double bass, and an overall dark and menacing feel. The vocals sound as which they are thrown into winds of darkness which gives this album a very nice touch. The song slows down to cleaner guitar sounds about halfway through, boasting with a desolate tone which was done very well and didn't ever once feel disconnected.

Sabbat keeps up with the slower depressive tempo. The church organ sound on this sluggish beast makes for a great wicked atmosphere, which is very welcomed around Halloween time in my household. However, its repetitive nature grew a bit tiresome and lost me after a few minutes or so. A lot of songs felt extremely similar, especially the track Astral Blood, that follows, and rarely changes much up even within its own slow depressive style. The finally track Gate of the Moon, is a bit more tenacious, incorporating quicker drumming patterns, but after this point, the repetition was just too much, especially within the use of the keyboards coating the same sound from song to song.

The Nine Gates isn’t a bad album. In fact there are some tracks that are draped in depression and atmosphere that I did thoroughly enjoy. However, a lot of the songs sound so similar and follow the same patterns it grew to be extremely tiresome very quickly.