Jeez, it's been awhile since their last album. You see, alot of Arcturus fans would've found this very surprising for the Norwegian Avant Garde black,metal band to be back after a 10 year hiatus of nothing. Now they're back and ready for action here in 2015 and have released something that will take you to the incredible reaches of the stars. This is set to be and epic, epic journey ahead of us.
Arcturian has alot going for it and has alot of potential and peaking high standards since the Sham Mirrors. Since the single The Arcturian Sign was released, many long time fans didn't exactly have much faith in the album(but then again, it's a single so you wouldn't expect to be complex as balls when compared to everything else, right?)but then the album came out and most of those dreams were crushed to tiny meteor rocks that don't have any effect on anything. This includes a total of ten tracks spanning from 3 and a half minutes to almost six minutes with the one track in the miiddle known as Game Over.
As you look at the track names you might find a recuring theme among them like they're all references to video games and other entertainment. For example: Bane is referencing Batman, Game Over refers to video games, Archer is a reference to Zelda, Fire Emblem, Green Arrow, Hawkeye, and Robin Hood and so on. The music its self is actually very intriguing to say the least. Besides, Avant Garde is supposed to be very out of the ordinary, intriguing, and breaking all rules of metal. You can see some traces of black metal as well which to be honest, you really make a space themed album without black metal vocals at all. It's impossible to make that idea good otherwise in any form of music to me. The black metal vocals enhance this feeling of space tenfold and can really,make you feel like you're being lost in space. If you feel you can't handle the pressure of Avant Garde, that's on you but let me tell you, you're going to be missing out. This is some crazy stuff right here.
I give this album a 10/10. I am the Grim Reaper, signing off.