This one man band (who goes by the name Shamaatae) was once a member of the Swedish band Grotesque I believe, who later transformed into the now popular At The Gates. Shamaatae provides us with a very original image-rather than a few spikes and corpse paint he's done up as somewhat of trollish creature, green monstrous face, large cloak, and a stick! Different anyways....Music wise, Arckanum is simply excellent, fast and raw as fuck, mean vocals, well done nature related sound effects placed throughout the album-all flowing together very nicely. The album starts out with the song "Hvila pa tronan min-which contains an excellent synth intro peppered with a few screams, and then blasts into a quick, yet well riffed song. The drumming here is one of the highlights if you ask me, nothing overly technical, yet it adds perfectly to every song mainly due to it's tight yet extremely fast nature. A whole atmosphere is created with this album if you listen to it as a whole, songs are occasionally interrupted by the sound's of forest creatures, water running, and the like. Each song flows quite and very well together, and when added with these sound effects makes for an excellent album. Shamaatae's vocals are raw and violently screamed, comparison's can honestly be made to early "A blaze.." era Darkthrone mixed with a bit of the vox you would hear on a Swedish death/black album (Dissection, Unanimated etc.)...thus they are very sick sounding. Overall an excellent album, fast, melodic, filled with an original atmosphere....raw black metal at it's best.

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