Arkheth — Clarity Came With A Cool Summer's Breeze

Arkheth is an Australian band with a sparse discography dating back to 2003, initially known for making black metal.  Their 4th and latest album, Clarity Came With A Cool Summer's Breeze, is released, on I, Voidhanger Records.  Stylistically, it's largely progressive viking and folk metal, with a curious dash of vintage psychedelic rock/folk, and hints of the roughness of classic black metal, particularly in the guitar tone and occasional blast beats.

The vintage space rock influence on this album is particularly odd, as the dreamy hedonism and warmth of summer of love music has rarely been combined with black metal, as one might say their moods are diametrically opposed.  This band, however, plays a more varied, sensitive form of music than just black metal, and I feel that all the moods and disparate elements somehow cohere together.  The multifaceted, constantly changing journey of this recording is like an eerie trip through the woods.  Even in its more retro, almost Beatles-esque moments, there is a certain eerieness implied behind the sound which well fits the chosen themes of psychedelic paranoia.

The album cover features a brightly coloured daytime landscape covered in large psychedelic mushrooms.  In pastel pink and bright blue, it is the antithesis of classic black metal artwork, perhaps an intentional contrast to the aesthetic of the band's early work.  It has a very "Alice In Wonderland" sensibility to it.

The vocals only occasionally go to the raspy extremes of black metal, with mostly a few forboding whispers to compliment the rock-influenced clean vocals.  The band seems to have looked to 70's music as the primary inspiration for the singing tone found here.  The vocalist can't project too well, and sometimes sounds a bit off-key, like they aren't used to singing in this style, but I find their melodies and lyrics wondrous.  Their enthusiasm and emotion is certainly coming through to me.

I was surprised to hear raging, charismatic saxophone solos on various tracks.  At this point, the only comparison I can make is to the later works of Ulver, who similarly blew wide open the progressive multi-genre possibilities of viking and black metal, unafraid to incorporate whichever sounds and instruments they chose.  As with newer Ulver works, the band teases heaviness on occasion, but in the end probably 70% of the album isn't really heavy enough to be decisively called metal, yet still retains metal's signature tonalities and note choices, unfolding at a more relaxed energy level.

In the current era, Arkheth are certainly not the only band to pivot from a more extreme metal style to an ethereal, melodic, thoughtful and more progressive style.  The precedent was many years ago set by the aforementioned Ulver as well as Katatonia, Anathema, Thy Catafalque and others.  That said, this is one of the best and more comfortable attempts I've heard at creating such an ambitious multigenre work.