MOONCITADEL’s origins can be traced back to the earlier EMPIRE OF THARAPHIA, in 2007. Over the next year, the band would release a pair of demos and then a split LP with the well-regarded DROWNING THE LIGHT in 2009. Silence would follow for the next number of years, as the band would ponder their next direction, with refinement and altering of vision set to take place. It finally came in 2014, as the new moniker (and direction) came with MOONCITADEL. Indeed aptly monikered, MOONCITADEL soon plotted a course for the cosmos with a spectral sort of black metal entirely not of this earth. The first demo under that moniker, 2016’s As Nightwind Embraced and the Shadows Caressed, surely showed that this refinement was favorable to the extreme: forgotten realms verily opened before the listener, an impossibly ancient yet nonetheless refreshing sound that stoked the dreamiest fires of the black metal imagination. A two-song EP, Moon Calls to Wander the Winter’