Ελληνικά
Last Updated on 02:53 PM by Giorgos Tsekas
Genre: Progressive Metal
Country: Norway
Label: Prophecy Productions
Year: 2015
Okay… And you might think that when we were asked which of the authors wants to do the review on the new Norwegians’ album I «fought» to be the one… You will say «you did not know, why you did not ask»?
Why I begin like this? Simply, because the «Arcturian» was a complete disappointment… For those who remember Arcturus as a black metal band… forget it! Of course maybe I shall blame myself too, because I «stayed» back in the era of their first two albums – which had ample black metal feeling – and I did not deal particularly with their next ones…
Here we have to do with an album of progressivewhatever style, having weird musical scales and many, many effects and samples. A mix of various genres – Do you want power? Folk? Gothic? Trance? (yes, yes, trance!) – songs that have no coherence, and each time I listen the next one I think I listen a CD of mixed tracks of different musical styles.
The funny thing is that individually each one of the band members gives its best in this album. Hellhammer is ruthless on drums, Knut the same on the guitar, Sverd and Skoll are following in the same awesomeness, while ICS Vortex shows us once again how charismatic he is when he grabs the microphone. All these are good, but…
Fortunately there are some worthy musical parts – a few, one here and one there (for example, the starting riff of «Crashland» and some nice chords since the mid of «The Journey» onwards).
However, in this «chaos» I found two tracks that I can say that I liked them, the – quite epic – «Angst» and – the step-child of Paradise Lost’s «Draconian Times» – «Game Over» (for which I say that expresses the absolute contrast with the opinion I formed for the rest of the album). Maybe and the assiduous «Archer» too…
But, what happened now? As much as I am listening, so will I find things I like? No, no, no, these are simply liking flashes and nothing more. I didn’t like «Arcturian»… I will listen once again the «Aspera Hiems Symfonia» album to come around…
2.5 / 6
(only for «Game Over» that definitely will be in a list on my mp3 player)
