Genre: Death/doom metal
Origin: Russia
Released: 2006
Website: -
Label: Stygian Crypt Productions
Uploaded: 18.02.09

I’ve never heard of Arcanar before, so I had absolutely no idea what to except. And I wasn’t any wiser when checking out the tracklist and lyrics. Everything’s in Russian here, including any and all info concerning recording. But graphically everything look tremendous, so at least that gave me some hope. However I could never have anticipated this quality slab of doom metal to be unleashed when I pressed play.
I love doom, in particular funeral and death/doom. But I rarely listen to any progressive doom metal. Except from Arcanar from now on. ‘Cause this is not your ordinary piece of metal. Classic 70ies rock-vibes are mixed with long acoustic passages of folk music. Experimental and jazzy metal is certainly no stranger, and intricate guitar work gets mixed with melodic keyboard sections, to turn into classic doom metal, suddenly drawing slow and old school death metal to mind.
And I’m impressed by the fact that they get all this different ideas and vibes to sound so natural together, where the clean and cosy vocals fit perfectly, just as well as the deep grunts go hand in hand musically. I can’t really compare this to any other band simply for the fact that I don’t know what the hell to compare it to. I haven’t heard anything like this before, although not saying they’re re-inventing the wheel here. But if you’d take parts of My Dying Bride, Candlemass and Black Sabbath, mix it up with folk music and rock just as well as death metal, and you’ve got yourself a strange idea of what’s going on with Pylnyi vladyka. And I absolutely love the accordion in Ya mog byt drugim. It’s just so weird and killer at the same time.

Tracklist:
01. Intro
02. Ten samogo sebya
03. Bez peremen
04. Etude #1
05. Pylnyi vladyka
06. Ya mog byt drugim
07. Etude #2
08. Bessonitsa
09. Arcanar