Originally released back in 2000 on Cold Meat Industries ….The Last Embrace was the third full-length album from Swedish neo-classical project Arcana. And as it’s title suggests the album offers up decidedly sombre-yet-often grand & ornate Neo-classical music, with a heady & rising blend of synthesized orchestration, dramatic-to-rolling martial percussion, cello, and a blend of gloomily epic-to- darkly soaring male and female vocals. Here on Cyclic Law is a CD reissue of the album, presented in a four-panel mini gatefold.

For this album, the line up was  Peter Pettersson-Vocals, Percussion, Guitars, Keyboards, Programming. Ida Bengtsson- Vocals, and Cello – Marcus Ohlsson. The album begins with the title track- which is also the longest track here at just shy of the six-minute mark- and we get a marching dramatic-yet- lushly gloomy blend of ringing percussive hits, more subdued marching percussion, and a grand-yet- bleak melody played out by the synth strings.At around the two-minute mark we pause briefly before the music kicks in with now the addition of chanting & rising male and female vocals- and one can picture a ornate funeral  procession taking place with a horse-drawn carriage adorned with gloomy grand decorations, and a small crowd of gowned & smartly dressed Victorian folk attending the graveside ready for the arrival of the dead.

As we move through the album we go from the urgently tolling & chiming of “Winds of The Lost Soul”- which brings together almost galloping sitar-like percussion & clear guitar, lulling & cool male singing, and swooning higher resister female harmonizing. Onto grimly tinkling harpsichord meets sailing-to-dramatic string, and tight marital drum work of “The March Of Loss”- with once again the addition of rising layers of male vocals kicking in midway to bring on that feeling of grand mournfulness. Onto bounding & dramatic original final album track “Lorica Vite”- with its tight marching orchestration/ percussion, warbling & rich female vocals, and layered male chanted vocals. The bonus track here is the 1.56 of "Eclipse Of The Soul"- here we find urgently tolling & ringing percussion, male-like monk chants, and bleakly stabbing horn work.

It’s great to see this slice of melancholic-yet-grand Neo-classical music back in print again- as it stands as a consistent, and often memorable enough example of the genre. This is part of Cyclic Law series of reissues of Arcana back-catalogue, so if you're after more from the project most definitely check in with the label.