I’ve always felt that you know what you’re going to get from Arkona, the Polish black metal who share a name with others. That’s not necessarily a good thing in a creative sense but this band is tight and intense, and represent their genre with style. “Stella Pandora” is the 8th album in over 30 years of existence of the band.
Comprising six hefty slabs, the album starts with “Pandora”. The grandiose opening out of the way, blasting drums and a prolonged scream help to whip up fury. The delivery is loud and heavy of course but has pomp and majesty in the way of a Dimmu Borgiresque type black metal. Momentarily it tones down and then there is a crescendo of imperious metal before the furious world is back upon us. The structure is as if Arkona are telling a story where one weighty movement leads into another. Some black metal bands just dig up dirt. Arkona don’t, coming at it from the higher end of the plane. After a quick moment to take breath, “Altaria” explodes with fiery intent. The mastery of tempo is there, as the song ploughs forward intensely and like “Pandora” in well-connected passages. While bursting with firepower, Arkona’s music captures the imagination with its riffs and hooks. There’s a symphonic element to this. Pumping, proud, defiant …
“Necropolis” scales the heights. Slower than the first two songs, there’s more room to be expansive. A faint haunting choral sound stands behinds the ferocious but measured approach of this song. The riff stands solid. The surround sound has the strong air of symphony. I was reminded of the epic atmospheres of Countless Skies and Insomnium here. “Elysium” carries on where “Necropolis” left off, representing a deathly scene in lofty fashion. The intensity level is raised for “Promoteus”. Away we go into distant, epic lands. Phew … that blasted away a few cobwebs. “Aurora” then takes us a final journey. Huge and expansive in its sound, again I call upon Dimmu Borgir for comparison. But Arkona tread their own path, and a monstrous path it is. As the winds whistle, electronic orchestration passes through giving an eerie atmosphere. It is the perfect foil for one last explosively epic passage of black metal grandeur.
As bands go, Arkona is one of the tightest and most accomplished out there. It would be wrong to say this is music by numbers. It’s just that because this band is so good at what they do, they give the impression of it. Let’s get away from the idea that black metal has to be grainy, raw and under-produced. If we do that, we’ll find “Stella Pandora” and Arkona’s back catalogue right up there. “Stella Pandora” is loud and proud and fiery. “Sweeping and elegiac” were the words used in the publicity for this album. I agree with that. This is a very powerful and magnetic album.
(8/10 Andrew Doherty)
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