Arcturus — The Sham Mirrors

After getting the wind knocked out of them by 1997's La Masquerade Infernale, fans of experimental dark-metal have held their collective breath until now: the release of The Sham Mirrors. How does it compares? What's new, what's old, what's blue & funky smelling? I'll try to answer all those questions here, but believe me, it won't always be easy to do so while keeping it at a readable length. There is much to say.

This album is somewhat of a departure from a departure. The theatrical vibe that was present on LMI is gone and what's left is a tighter and more focused Arcturus. Of course some will miss the turn-of-the-century cabaret vibe, but I'm not sure it would have been wise to do one more album in that style. It's like trying to sculpt a second statue that looks like your other one just because people liked it... The result could have been artistically forced and I strongly believe that musicians have should have the freedom to play what they feel like at the time of recording and not what they played in 1997. But anyway, who on earth expected Arcturus to stay in the same place indefinitely? Enough of my moralizing, how's the album?

Where LMI had a laid-back mid-tempo pace, Sham Mirrors has, on average, a higher velocity and packs much more music and ideas in its 43 minutes running time. Hellhammer can finally flex his drumming muscles a little (more than on LMI in any case) and the rhythm guitars have a center-stage role as opposed to LMI where the spotlight was on the long spacey psychedelic solos and the synths. This is not to say that the elements that made the previous album great are gone, the keys are back with a vengeance and they sound better and more varied than before and many psychedelic freak-outs can be found (wait until you hear that breakdown in "Nightmare Heaven"!).

But lets not compare Sham Mirrors to LMI too much. How does it stand on its own? Marvelously! So much happens that it's impossible to get bored and the "cosmic metal" vibe has better results here than on Sverd's other projects (I'm mostly thinking of Covenant's "Nexus Polaris" which was fun for a little while but lacked longevity). From sci-fi lyrics on "Kinetic" to abstract an poetic ruminations on "Nightmare Heaven", it all works well and, even though the lyrics are not as much of a focus point as on LMI, I am glad that they are of high quality as silly ones could have bogged down the album (anybody heard Tiamat's Skeleton Skeletron?). Ihsahn, from the recently disbanded Emperor, provides his screams on "Radical Cut", the most black-metal sounding thing that the band has done in a long time. There are also some songs (ie. "For To End Yet Again") which have a certain not-quite-groovy-but-close quality (it's more like "bouncy"), a little like "The Chaos Path" on LMI, and it works well because you can feel the playfulness of the band. They are definitely not trying to be scary (just look at the promotional pictures!).

Another strong point that is worth mentioning is Trickster G's singing. A good analogy (stay with me on this one) could be made with Nick Cave's vocals. I am not saying that they sound alike, but I think that a comparison could be made between their respective evolution in time. Both have always been good singers because they had lots of charisma and personality, put good inflection into their voices and knew how to sing in a way that served the song well (even if sometimes it was half-singing half-talking). But now both of them have grown into better and more mature singers; they still have all the traits that made them good in the first place, but add to that a level of technical ability that permits them to do much more. Garm now sings in a slightly higher pitched and much more versatile voice, somewhat similar to what could be heard on Ulver's "Perdition City" (the song "Nowhere/Catastrophe" comes to mind). His vocal melodies on the Sham Mirrors are all over the place and much more daring than they ever were before. He's now a force to be reckoned with, to say the least.

If you like what Arcturus has done in the past and are not expecting them to repeat themselves, this CD was well worth the wait and I see absolutely no reason why you shouldn't like it. A new star in the constellation.