Black metal from Poland is not a rarity, but it is a trademark for quality. Arkona are up there amongst them, having spent 26 years on the subject and now reaching the milestone of their seventh full album release.
This album comprises 6 hefty chunks. The first of them, “Stellar Inferno”, opens with an eerie intro of the sort that you would get at a live performance. But soon enough we’re stuck in a blizzard of harsh and violent warfare. There’s melancholy in this misery, but there’s no time for pity as Arkona bombard us with a storm of blackness. It is angry and imperious, contemptuous even. All I can hear is destruction. This terrible scene is for our enjoyment. There are tinklings of symphony as we enter “Alone Among Wolves” but not much, as Arkona are about force. Like “Stellar Inferno” before it, “Alone Among Wolves” is like being in a blizzard. We stay there until its cosmically-charged end. The title track then provides a further turbulent assault. Arkona have it all under control. It’s impressively heavy and epic even, but it is all from the same template. The turbulence continues with “Deathskull Mysterium”, only disturbed a couple of times by a cold guitar line, and a break towards the end before the anticipated return to violent darkness. A roaring wall of sound characterises ever piece. “Towards the Dark” is no exception. The vocalist’s strains suggest pain and suffering. The track rumbles along remorselessly, but ferocious as it is, it lacked identity for me until the end when a symphonic distortion gave it an edginess. The cosmic world returns for the start of “Grand Manifest of Death”. Predictably the explosion and the storm start after about a minute, when once again we are subjected to more black and withering violence. A devastated path is laid before us. A break provides air and leads to a prolonged downtrodden climax to the album, rising momentarily to finish.
The musicianship and atmospheres of “Age of Capricorn” are impressive but I have to confess that I found this album too clinical in its structure. It does move here and there out of the centre ground of heavy, violent black metal but I found it was quite predictable.
(7/10 Andrew Doherty)
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